Chains threw an arm around the man’s neck. Wrenching the unfortunate fellow toward him, Chains whispered harshly into his ear—again, just a few sentences. Chains then shoved him away, and Locke was astonished to see how pale the man’s face had become.
“I … uh, I … understand,” said the man. He seemed to be having difficulty making his voice work properly. “My, uh, apologies, deepest apologies. I’ll just—”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Quite!”
The man took Chains’ advice, with haste, and Chains helped Locke into the boat. Locke sat on a bench at the bow directly beside Sabetha, feeling a warmth in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun when his leg brushed hers. As Chains settled onto the bench in front of the two children, the pole-man nudged the gondola away from the quay stones and out into the calm, slimy water of the canal.
At that moment, Locke was as much in awe of Chains as he was of his proximity to Sabetha. Charming yellowjackets, commandeering boats, and making wealthy men piss themselves—all of that, bribes notwithstanding, with just a few whispered words here and there. Who and what did Chains know? What was his actual place in Capa Barsavi’s hierarchy?
“Where to?” said the pole-man.
“Temple District, Venaportha’s landing,” said Chains.
“What’s your outfit?”
“Gentlemen Bastards.”
“Right, heard of you. Seem to be doing well for yourselves, mixing with the quality.”
“We do well enough. You one of Gap-Tooth’s lads?”
“Spot on, brother. Call ourselves the Clever Enoughs, out of the west Narrows. Some of us have what you’d call gainful employment, spotting likely marks on the canals. Business ain’t but shit lately.”
“Here’s a picture of the duke for a smooth ride.” Chains slapped a gold tyrin down on the bench behind him.
“I’ll drink your health tonight, friend, no fuckin’ lie.”
Chains let the pole-man get on with his work, and turned back to Locke and Sabetha, leaning close to them. He folded his hands and said quietly, “Now, what the hell did I just see on Coin-Kisser’s Row? Can either of you translate the fuck-wittery into some sort of vaguely logical account?”
“He’s got six buttons,” said Sabetha.
“Redgreenblack blue,” spat Locke.
“Oh no,” said Chains. “Contest’s over. I declare a tie. No slithering to victory on a technicality.”
“Well, I had to try,” said Sabetha.
“That might have been the lesson,” muttered Locke.
“It’s not over until it’s really, really over,” said Sabetha. “Or something. You know.”
“My prize students,” sighed Chains. “Sometimes a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza really isjust a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza. Let’s start with you, Locke. What was your plan?”
“Uhhh …”
“You know, believe it or not, ‘the gods will provide’ is not a fucking plan, lad. You’ve got one hell of a talent for improvisation, but when that lets you down it lets you down hard. You’ve got to have a next move in mind, like in Catch-the-Duke. Remember how you managed that affair with the corpse? I knowyou can do better than you just did.”
“But—”
“Sabetha’s turn. Near as I could tell, you had him. You were the one in the rear, the one that came out after he chased the first two north, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sabetha, warily.
“Where’d you get the decoys?”
“Girls I used to know in Windows. They’re seconds in a couple of the bigger gangs now. We lifted the dresses and went over the plan last night.”
“Ah,” said Chains. “There’s that charming notion I was just discussing, Locke. A stratagem. What did your friends have in their bags?”
“Colored wool,” said Sabetha. “Best we could do.”
“Not bad. Yet all you could manage was a tie with young Master Planless here. You had him in a fine bind, and then … what, exactly?”
“Well, he pretended to be sick. Then that yellowjacket came along and collared him, and I … I thought it was more important than anything else to go after him and get him loose.”
“Get me loose?” Locke sputtered in surprise. “What do you mean, get me loose? I passed that woman ten solons to get her to pick me up and carry me north!”
“I thought she’d grabbed you for real!” Sabetha’s soft brown eyes darkened, and the color rose in her cheeks. “You little ass, I thought I was rescuingyou!”
“But … why?”
“There was nothing on the ground when I followed behind you!” Sabetha pulled her hat and veil off, and angrily yanked out the lacquered pins in her hair. “I didn’t see any sick-up on the bridge, so I thought that had tipped the yellowjacket to the fact that you were bullshitting!”
“You thought I got collared for real because I threw up wrong?”
“I know what sort of mess you could make back when you were a street teaser.” Sabetha shook her hair out—alchemically adjusted or not, it was a sight that made Locke’s heart punch the front of his rib cage. “I didn’t see any mess like that, so I assumed you got pinched! I gave that woman all the money I had left!”
“Look, I might have … I might have stuck my finger down my throat when I was little, but … I’m not gonna do that allthe time!”
“That’s not the point!” Sabetha folded her arms and looked away. They were moving east now, across the long curving canal north of the Videnza, and in the distance beyond Sabetha Locke could see the dark, blocky shape of the Palace of Patience rising above slate roofs. “You knew you were losing, you had no plan, so you pitched a fit and made a mess of everything! You weren’t even trying to win; you were just sloppy. And Iwas sloppy to fall for it!”
“I was afraid this might happen, sooner or later,” said Chains in a musing tone of voice. “I’ve been thinking that we need a more elaborate sort of sign language, more than what we flash back and forth with the other Right People. Some sort of private code, so we can keep one another on the same page when we’re running a scheme.”
“No, Sabetha, look,” said Locke, hardly hearing Chains. “You weren’t sloppy, you were brilliant, you deserved to win—”
“That’s right,” she said. “But you didn’t lose, so I didn’twin.”
“Look, I concede. I give it to you. I’ll do all your kitchen chores for three days, just like—”
“I don’t want a damned concession! I won’t take your pity as a coin.”
“It’s not … it’s not pity, honest! I just … you thought you were really rescuing me, I owe you! I wantyour chores, it would be a pleasure. It would be my, my privilege.”
She didn’t turn back toward him, but she stared at him out of the corner of her eye for a long, silent moment. Chains said nothing; he had gone still as a stone.
“Sloppy idiot,” Sabetha muttered at last. “You’re trying to be charming. Well, I do not choose to be charmed by you, Locke Lamora.”
She shuffled herself on the bench and gripped the gunwale of the gondola with both hands, so that her back was completely toward him.
“Not today, at any rate,” she said softly.
Sabetha’s anger stung Locke like a swallowed wasp, but that pain was subsumed by a warmer, more powerful sensation that seemed to swell his skull until he was sure it was about to crack like an egg.
For all her seeming indifference, for all her impenetrability and frustration, she’d cared enough about him to throw the contest aside the instant she’d thought he was in real danger.