“What kind of men? Uniforms? Weapons?”
“I don’t think they were mustard. They might’ve been with the old guy you wanted us to rob.”
“Hell’s flaming shits.” Chains grabbed up his walking stick (an affectation for his disguise, but a fine way to have a weapon close at hand), then produced a dagger in a leather sheath that he tossed to Galdo. “Stay here. Douse the light and hide yourselves. Try not to stab Calo if he returns before I do.”
“Where are you going?” asked Locke.
“To find out who we’re dealing with.”
Chains went out the door with a speed that put the lie to his frequent claims of advancing infirmity. Galdo picked up the tiny alchemical light and tossed it to Locke, who concealed it within his closed hands. Alone in the darkness, the two boys settled down to wait for whatever came next.
7
CHAINS RETURNED a brief fraction of an hour later, with an ashen-faced Calo in tow. Locke uncovered the light as they entered the warehouse and ran toward them.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Chains stared at the three boys and sighed. “I need the smallest,” he said quietly.
“Me?”
“Of course you, Locke.” Chains reached out and grabbed both Sanza brothers. He knelt beside them and whispered instructions that were too brief and quiet for Locke to catch. Calo and Galdo seemed to recoil.
“Gods damn it, boys,” said Chains. “You know we’ve got no choice. Get back home. Stay together.”
They ran out of the warehouse without another word. Chains rose and turned to Locke.
“Come,” he said. “Time is no friend of ours this evening.”
“Where are we going?” Locke scampered to keep up.
“Not far. A house a block north of where you were.”
“Is it … should we really be going back that way?”
“Perfectly safe now that you’re with me.” True to his word, Chains had turned east, on a street rather than an alley, and was walking briskly toward the neighborhood Locke had just fled.
“Who’s got her? The yellowjackets?”
“No. They’d have taken her to a watch station, not a private residence.”
“The, um, men we tried to rob?”
“No. Worse than that.” Locke couldn’t see Chains’ face, but he imagined that he could hear his scowl in every word he spoke. “Agents of the duke. His secret police. Commanded by the man with no name.”
“No name?”
“They call him the Spider. His people get work that’s too delicate for the yellowjackets. They’re spies, assassins, false-facers. Dangerous folk, as dangerous as any of the Right People.”
“Why were they at the house?”
“Bad luck is much too comforting a possibility. I believe my information about the necklace was a poisoned tip.”
“But then … holy shit, but that means we have an informer!”
“It is a vile sin for that wordto come lightly off the lips of our kind.” Chains whirled, and Locke stumbled backward in surprise. Chains’ face was grimmer than Locke had ever seen it, and he waved a finger to emphasize his words. “It’s the worst thing one Right Person can say or think of another. Before you accuse, you’d damn well better know. Drop that word carelessly and you’d best be armed, understand?
“Y-yes. Sorry.”
“My man at Meraggio’s is solid.” Chains turned, and with Locke at his heels hurried down the street again. “My childrenare beyond reproach, all of you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. That means the information itself was bait for a trap. They probably didn’t even know who’d bite. They set a line and waited for a fish.”
“Why would they care?”
“It’s in their interest,” grumbled Chains. “Thieves with contacts at Meraggio’s, thieves willing to work in a nice quiet place like the Razona … that sort of person merits scrutiny. Or stepping on.”
Locke held onto Chains’ sleeve as they threaded their way back into the quality neighborhoods, where the peace and calm seemed utterly surreal to Locke, given the disturbance he and Sabetha had raised so recently. At last Chains guided Locke into the low, well-kept gardens behind a row of three-story homes. He pointed to the next house over, and the two of them crouched behind a crumbling stone wall to observe the scene.
Half-visible past the edge of the house was a carriage without livery, guarded by at least two men. The lights in the house were on, but all the windows, save one, were covered by curtains behind thick mosaic glass. The lone exception was on the rear wall, where an orange glow was coming from under a second-story window that had been cracked open.
“Is she in there?” whispered Locke.
“She is. That open window.”
“How do we get her out?”
“We don’t.”
“But … we’re here … you brought me here—”
“Locke.” Chains set a hand on Locke’s right shoulder. “She’s tied down in that room up there. They have four men inside and two out front with the carriage. Duke’s men, above every law. You and I can’t fight them.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
Chains reached inside his tunic, snapped the cord that held a small object around his neck, and held the object out to Locke. It was a glass vial, about the size of Locke’s smallest finger.
“Take this,” Chains said. “You’re small enough to climb the vines on that back wall, reach the window, and then—”
“ No.” The realization of what that vial meant made Locke want to throw up. “No, no, no!”
“Listen, boy, listen! Time is wasting. We can’t get her out. They’ll start asking her questions soon. You know how they do that? Hot irons. Knives. When they’re finished they’ll know everything about you, me, Calo, Galdo. What we do and where we work. We’ll never be safe in Camorr again, and our own kind will be as hot for our blood as the duke’s people.”
“No, she’s clever, she’ll—”
“We’re not made of iron, boy.” Chains grabbed Locke’s right hand, squeezed it firmly, and placed the warm glass vial against his palm. “We’re flesh and blood, and if they hurt us long enough we’ll say anything they want us to say.”
Chains gently bent Locke’s fingers in over the vial, then lifted his own hands away slowly.
“She’ll know what to do,” he said.
“I can’t,” said Locke, fresh tears starting down his cheeks. “I can’t. Please.”
“Then they’ll torture her,” said Chains quietly. “You know she’ll fight them as long as she can. So they’ll do it for hours. Maybe days. They’ll break her bones. They’ll peel her skin. And you’re the only onewho can get up to that window. You … trip over your tongue around her. You like her, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Locke, staring into the darkness, trying desperately to think of anything bolder, cleverer, braver than climbing to that window and handing a beautiful girl a vial with which she would kill herself.
He had nothing.
“Not fair,” he sobbed. “Not fair, not fair.”
“We can’t get her out, Locke.” The gentleness and sorrow in Chains’ voice caught Locke’s attention in a way that scolding or commanding could not have. “What happens now is up to you. If you can’t get to her, she’ll live. For a while. And she’ll be in hell. But if you can get to that window … if you can just pass the vial to her …”
Locke nodded, and hated himself for nodding.
“Brave lad,” whispered Chains. “Don’t wait. Go. Fast and quiet as a breeze.”
It was no great feat to steal across thirty feet of dark garden, to find hand and footholds in the lush vines at the rear of the house, to scuttle upward. But the moments it took felt like hours, and by the time Locke was poised beside the second-story window he was shaking so badly that he was sure anyone in the house could hear it.
By the grace of the Crooked Warden there were no shouts of alarm, no windows slamming open, no armed men charging into the garden. Ever so carefully, he set his eyes level with the two-inch gap at the bottom of the open window, and moved his head to the right just far enough to peek into the room.