“We can’tcollect the money,” said Moncraine. “It’s one of the things Boulidazi and I were arguing about last night before he got too drunk to think! He’s got someone coming in on his orders to handle all the coin!”
“What?” said Locke and Sabetha in unison.
“Just what I said, you fucking know-it-all infants. Boulidazi might be coffin meat, but he’s got a hireling already assigned to collect the money for him. None of us here will be allowed to touch a copper of it!”
CHAPTER TEN
THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: FINAL APPROACHES
1
“YOU’RE AS WELCOME as a scorpion in a nursery,” said Vordratha, meeting Locke with a glare and a wall of well-dressed toughs at his back. As was becoming routine, Locke had been halted before making it halfway across the entry hall of the Sign of the Black Iris.
“I need to see her,” panted Locke. His flight across the city had not been dignified or subtle; he’d stolen a horse to make it possible, and bluecoats were probably scouring the Vel Verda as he spoke.
“Why, you’re the very last person in Karthain who’d be allowed to do so.” Vordratha’s smirk split his lean face like a sword wound. “Her orders were explicit and vehement.”
“Look, I know our last encounter was—”
“Unpleasant.” Vordratha gestured. Before Locke could turn to run, the Black Iris guards had him pinioned.
“Remember, Master Vordratha, that you’d as good as confessed your intentions to have us beaten and left in an alley,” said Locke. “So if our conversational options were narrowed you’ve only yourself to blame!”
“The mistress of the house specifically desires not to see you.” Vordratha leaned in close; his breath was like a hint of old spilled wine. “And while I am charged not to harm you, I’d argue that I’m not responsible for anything that happens between your leaving my custody and hitting the pavement.”
Vordratha’s guards pushed Locke outside and heaved him in an impressive arc that terminated in a bone-jarring impact with the cobblestones. His feelings warred bitterly over his next move, pride and desire against prudence and street-reflexes, the latter winning out only when he realized how perilously close he was to carriage traffic and how many witnesses were on hand to see him get crushed by it. Groaning, he crawled back to the curb.
His stolen horse was gone, and the Black Iris stable boys leered at him knowingly. It was a long, painful walk to a neighborhood where a coach would deign to pick him up.
2
“ … and that’s the whole gods-damned mess,” said Locke, his fingers knotted around a glass that had once contained a throat-scorching quantity of brandy. “I found a ride, came straight back, and here we are.”
It was past midnight. Locke had returned, sequestered Jean in their suite, and with the help of large plates of food and a bottle of Josten’s most expensive distilled spirits he’d unrolled the whole tale.
“Do you really need me to tell you that the bitch was lying?” said Jean.
“I know she was lying,” said Locke. “There have to be lies mixed in somewhere. It’s the parts that might be true that concern me.”
“Why not assume it was ALL lies?” Jean ran his fingers rapidly over his temples, attempting to massage away the dull pain still radiating from his plastered nose. “Bow-to-stern bullshit! Gods dammit, this is what you and I do to people. We talk them into corners where they can’t tell truth from nonsense.”
“She knows my name. My actual name. The one I—”
“Yes,” said Jean. “And I know who told her.”
“But I only ever—”
“That’s right.” Disgust burned like bile at the back of Jean’s throat, and he tapped his own chest with both hands. “They said they opened me like a book in Tal Verrar and took everything they wanted. Therefore, Imust have given them that name. Think! The rest of Patience’s story was most likely built around it.”
“That leaves the question of the third name.”
“The one Patience claims is deeper than the one you gave me? Is it even there?”
Locke rubbed his shadow-cupped eyes. “I don’t … I don’t know. It’s not a name at all. Just a feeling, maybe.”
“About what I expected,” said Jean. “Do you reallyremember ever having that feeling, before tonight? It strikes me as a ready-made bluff. I have all manner of strange unsorted feelings in my heart and head; we allmust. She didn’t give you half a particle of telling evidence! All she did was plant a doubt that you could gnaw on forever, if you let yourself.”
“If I let myself.” Locke tossed his glass aside. “All my life I’ve wondered where the hell I came from. Now I’ve got possibilities like an arrow to the gut, and I absolutely do nothave time to fuss over them.”
“Possibilities,” sighed Jean. “In faith, now, even if they were true answers, would you really want this particular bunch? I realize it’s easy for me to say … knowing when and where I was born—”
“I know where I’m from,” said Locke. “I’m from Camorr. I’m from Camorr! Even if everything she said was true, that’s all I give a barrel of dry rat shit about. That and Sabetha.” Locke stood, the lines of his face grimly set. “That, and Sabetha, and beating the hell out of her in this idiotic election. Now—”
Someone knocked at the door, loudly and urgently.
3
LOCKE WATCHED as Jean unbolted it with customary caution. There stood Nikoros, unshaven, his eyes like fried eggs and hair looking as though it had been caught in the spokes of a wagon wheel. He held a piece of parchment in a shaking hand.
“This just came in,” he muttered. “Specifically for Master Lazari, from a Black Iris courier at the AHHHHHHH—”
This exclamation erupted out of him as Locke darted forward and seized the letter. He snapped it open, noting the quick familiar strokes of Sabetha’s script:
I wish I could write your name above and sign my own below, but we both know what a poor idea that would be.
I know my refusal to see you must have been painful, and for that I apologize, but I believe I was only right. My heart is sick with this strangeness and these puzzles. I can barely tame words to make whole thoughts and I suspect you could hardly be accused of being at your best, either. I don’t know what I would do were you in arm’s reach; what I might ask, what I might demand for comfort’s sake. The only certainty is that the terms of our employment are not relaxed, and we are both in the severest danger if we tread carelessly. Were we together, at this moment, I don’t imagine we could possibly tread otherwise.
I don’t understand what happened this evening. I know only that it scares me. It scares me that your handler, for any reason, has taken such an interest in telling us so much. It scares me that there are things in motion around you that would appear to tie us both to such secrets and obligations.
It scares me that there may be something still hidden even from yourself, some elemental part of you that might yet tumble like a broken wall, and I am haunted by the thought that when next I find you looking at me it might not be with the eyes I remember, but with those of a stranger.
Forgive me. I know that you would be made as anxious by my silence as by my honesty, and so I have chosen honesty.
I have let feelings I once thought buried come back with real power over me, and now I find myself in desperate need of detachment and clear thoughts. Please don’t try to return to the Sign of the Black Iris in person. Please don’t come looking for me. I need you to be my opponent now more than I need you to be my lover or even my friend. In this I speak for us both.
“Ah, damn everything,” Locke muttered, crumpling the parchment and stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “Gods damn everything.” He collapsed back into his chair, brows knit, and let his gaze wander aimlessly over the wall. The most awkward sort of silence settled over the room, until Jean cleared his throat.
“Well, ah, Nikoros. You look like you’ve been thrashed by devils,” he said. “What’s going on?”