“How can I make amends?” said Jean.
“You can’t.” Cortessa stood up, laughing.
“Please don’t do anything to my friend. He had nothing to do with the physiker. Do whatever you like with me. I’ll cooperate. Just—”
“My, you’ve gone from hard to soft, big man. You’ll cooperate? Of course you’ll fucking cooperate, you’ve got four of my men sitting on you.”
“There’s money,” said Jean. “Money, or I could work for you—”
“You’ve got nothing I want,” said Cortessa. “And that’s your problem. But I have a serious problem of my own.”
“Oh?”
“Ordinarily, this is the part where we’d make soup out of your balls and watch you drink it. Ordinarily. But we have what you might call a conflict of interest. On the one hand, you’re an outlander and you touched a Lashani with all the right friends. That says we fucking kill you.
“On the other hand, it’s plain you are or were some sort of connected man in Camorr. Big Barsavi might not be with us anymore, gods rest his crooked soul, but nobody in their right mind wants to fuck with the capas. You could be somebody’s cousin. Who knows? A year or two from now, maybe someone comes looking for you. Asks around town. Whoops! Someone tells them to look on the bottom of the lake. And who gets sent back to Camorr in a box to pay the debt? Yours truly. That says we don’t fucking kill you.”
“Like I said, I have some money,” said Jean. “If that can help.”
“It’s not your money anymore. But what does help is that your friend here is already dying … and from the looks of it, he’ll be pretty damn glad to go.”
“Look, if you’ll just let him stay, he needs rest—”
“I know. That’s why I’m kicking your asses out of Lashain.” Cortessa waved his hands at his people. “Strip the place. All the food, all the wine. Blankets, bandages, money. Take the wood out of the fireplace. Throw the water out of the jug. Pass word to the innkeeper that these two fucks are under the interdict.”
“Please,” said Jean. “Please—”
“Shut up. You can keep your clothes and your weapons. I won’t send you out completely naked. But I want you gone. By sunrise, you’re out of the city or Zodesti gets to cut your ears off himself. Your friend can find somewhere else to die.” Cortessa gave Locke a pat on the leg. “Think fondly of me in hell, you poor bastard.”
“You might not be long in getting there yourself,” said Locke. “I’ll have a big hug waiting for you.”
Cortessa’s people ransacked the suite. They carefully piled Jean’s weapons on the floor; everything else was taken or smashed. Locke was left on the empty bed in his bloodstained breeches and tunic. Jean’s private purse and the one that had contained their general funds were both emptied. A few moments later, one of Cortessa’s men stuffed the empty purses into his pockets as well.
“Oh,” said Cortessa to Jean as the tumult was winding down, “one thing more. Leone gets a minute alone with you in the corner. For his nose.”
“Bleth you, bothss,” muttered Leone, gingerly poking at the swollen bruises that had spread to his lips.
“And you get to take it, outlander. Lift so much as a finger and I’ll have your friend gutted.” Cortessa patted Jean on the cheek and turned to leave. “Sunrise. Get the fuck out of Lashain. Or our next conversation takes place in Scholar Zodesti’s cellar.”
10
“JEAN,” WHISPERED Locke as soon as the last of Cortessa’s bruisers had left. “Jean! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Jean was huddled where the linens table had been before Cortessa’s men removed it. Leone had been straightforward but enthusiastic, and Jean felt as though he’d been thrown down a rocky hillside. “I’m just … enjoying the floor. It was kind enough to catch me when I fell.”
“Jean, listen. I took some of the money when we got here on the boat.… I hid it. Loosened a floorboard under the bed.”
“I know you did. I unloosened it. Took it back.”
“You eel! I wanted you to have something to get away with when you—”
“I knew you’d try it, Locke. There weren’t many hiding places available within stumbling distance of the bed.”
“Argh!”
“Argh, yourself.” Jean heaved himself over on his back and stared at the ceiling, breathing shallowly. Nothing felt broken, but his ribs and everything attached to them were lined up to file complaints. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll go out and find some blankets for you. I can get a cart. Maybe a boat. Get you out of here somehow, before the dawn. We’ve got a lot of darkness to use.”
“Jean, you’ll be watched until you leave. They’re not going to let you”—Locke coughed several times—“steal anything big. And I’m not going to let you carry me.”
“Not let me carry you? What are you going to fend me off with, sarcasm?”
“You should have had a few thousand solari to work with, Jean. Could have gone anywhere … done anything with it.”
“I did exactly what I wanted to do with it. Now, you go with me. Or I stay here to die with you.”
“There’s no reasoning with you.”
“You’re such a paragon of compromise yourself. Pig-brained gods-damned egotist.”
“This isn’t a fair contest. You have more energy for big words than I do.” Locke laughed. “Gods, look at us. Can you believe they even took our firewood?”
“Very little surprises me these days.” Jean slowly stood up, wincing all the way. “So, inventory. No money. Clothes on our backs. Mostly my back. Some weapons. No firewood. Since I doubt we’ll be allowed to lift anything in the city, looks like I’ll have to do some highway work.”
“How do you plan on halting carriages?”
“I’ll throw you in the road and hope they stop.”
“Criminal genius. Will they be stopping out of heartfelt sympathy?”
“Revulsion, more likely.”
There was a knock at the front door.
Locke and Jean glanced at one another uneasily, and Jean picked up a dagger from the small pile of weapons that had been left to him.
“Maybe they’re back for the bed,” said Locke.
“Why would they bother knocking?”
Jean kept most of his body behind the door as he opened it, and he tucked the dagger just out of sight behind his back.
It wasn’t Cortessa, or a dog-leech, or even the master of the Villa Suvela, as Jean had expected. It was a woman, dressed in a richly embroidered oilcloak streaming with water. She held an alchemical globe in her hands, and by its pale light Jean could see that she was not young.
Jean scanned the curb behind her. No carriage, no litter, no escort of any sort—just misty darkness and the patter of the rain. A local? A fellow guest of the Villa Suvela?
“I, uh … can I be of assistance, madam?”
“I believe we can be of assistance to one another. If I might come in?” She had a soft and lovely voice, with something very close to a Lashani accent. Close, but not exact.
“We are … that is, I’m sorry, but we have some difficulty at the moment. My friend is ill.”
“I know they took your furniture.”
“You do?”
“And I know that you and your friend didn’t have much else to begin with.”
“Madam, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.”