“You two will crap splinters for a month after I make you eat this table,” said Jean.
“Well, if you put it like that,” said Calo. “Why don’t we use our middle names? I’ll be Giacomo, and you can be Castellano.”
“Might work,” said Galdo grudgingly. “Need a last name.”
“ Asino!” said Calo. “It’s Throne Therin for ‘donkey.’ ”
“Gods lend me strength,” said Sabetha.
6
“MASTER DE Barra,” said Anatoly Vireska two nights later, looking up with a smile that put every gap in his teeth on display, like archery ports in a crumbling fortress wall. The rangy, middle-aged Vadran caravan master gave the Gentlemen Bastards’ wagon a friendly thump as Jean brought their team of four horses to a halt. “And company. You picked a good time to show up.”
“I’ve seen this place when it’s busy.” Locke glanced backward at the Millfalls District and the Street of Seven Wheels, which lay under the strange particolored haze of fading Falselight. Traffic on the cobbled road itself was sparse, since few business travelers came or went from the Cenza Gate as darkness was falling. “Figured we might get a jump on the chaos.”
“Just so. Pull up anywhere in the commons beneath the wall. Now, if you want more than half-assed shelter, there’s the Andrazi stable down the lane to the right, and the Umbolo stable just yonder, the one with all the mules. Andrazi tips me a few coppers a week to point people her way, but I wouldn’t take the money if I didn’t think her place was the better bargain, hey?”
“Duly noted,” said Jean.
“Want me to send a boy around to help with your horses? I could have my outfitter check your packing, too.”
“I’m sure we’re fine, thanks,” said Locke.
“Glad to hear it. Just so we’re clear, though, my guards don’t stand to duty until we line up all our ducklings tomorrow morning. As long as we’re behind walls, your security is your own business. Given that you’re bedding down twenty yards from a watch barracks, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“Nor shall we.” Jean waved farewell, and convinced the horses to take them into the shadow of Camorr’s walls. Rickety overhanging panels topped about a hundred yards worth of barren common space in the lee of the wall, where those unwilling or unable to pay for service at the commercial stables could pull in. Sabetha, Calo, and Galdo piled out of the back of the open-topped wagon as it rolled to a stop.
“One quarter of a mile down, a mere two hundred to go,” said Locke. The humid air was heavy with the smells of old hay, animal sweat, and droppings. Other travelers were lighting lanterns, laying out bedrolls, and starting cooking fires; there were at least a dozen wagon parties stopped beside the wall. Locke wondered idly how many of them were bound for Espara as part of Vireska’s caravan.
“Let’s get you fixed up for the night, boys.” Jean hopped down from the wagon and gave a reassuring pat to the flank of the nearest cart-horse. Jean had spent several months in the role of a teamster’s apprentice two years earlier, and had assumed responsibility for driving and tending their animals without complaint. The team represented a significant portion of the money Chains had given them, but could be resold in Espara to flesh out their temporarily thinned finances.
“Sweep beneath the wagon, would you, Giacomo?” said Galdo. “Don’t want turds for pillows.”
“Sweep it your fuckin’ self, Castellano,” said Calo. “Nobody put you in charge.”
“Mind yourself,” whispered Sabetha, grabbing Calo by the arm. “We’ve got ten days on the road ahead of us. Do they have to be a miserable trial for no good reason?”
“I’m not his damn valet,” said Calo.
“That’s right.” Locke stepped between the Sanzas, thinking quickly. “None of us are. We’ll share sweeping duties, all of us. Calo starts tonight—”
“I’m Giacomo.”
“Right, sorry. Giacomo starts tonight. Other brother when we stop tomorrow. I’ll take the night after that, and so on. A fair rotation. Good enough?”
“I can live with it,” muttered Calo. “I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. Just won’t have him putting on airs.”
Locke ground his teeth together. The Sanzas had spent the last several months steadily discarding their old habits of synchronicity in action and appearance. They took pains to distinguish themselves from one another, and their differences in grooming were the merest outward flourishes of the phenomenon. Locke would never have begrudged the twins an individualistic phase, but their timing was awkward as hell, and their ongoing spats were like fresh wood heaped on an already rising fire.
“Look,” said Locke, realizing that the gang’s mechanisms of fellowship needed oiling rather badly, “with so many taverns close at hand, I don’t see any need for us to torture ourselves with boiled beef and bag water. I’ll fetch us something more pleasing.”
“We have the coin for that sort of luxury?” said Sabetha.
“I might have cut a purse or two while I was out this morning. Just for the sake of, ah, financial flexibility.” Locke shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “You want to come with?”
“You need me to?”
“Well … I’d like you to.”
“Hmmm.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, during which Locke experienced the curious sensation of his heart apparently sinking several inches deeper into his chest. Then she shrugged.
“I suppose.”
They left Jean with the horses, Galdo watching their supplies, and Calo gingerly cleaning the ground beneath the wagon. There was a well-lit tavern at the end of the lane beside the wall, just past the Andrazi stable, and by unspoken mutual consent they headed toward it in the gathering darkness. Locke stole a glance at Sabetha as they walked.
Her tightly-bound hair was further packed beneath a close-fitting linen cap, and all of her clothing was long and loose, disguising her curves. It was the sort of dress a prudent, mild, and unassertive young woman would choose for the road, and as such it suited Sabetha not at all. Still, she wore it as well as anyone could, as far as Locke’s eyes were concerned.
“I was, ah, hoping I could talk to you,” he said.
“Easily done,” said Sabetha. “Open your mouth and let words come out.”
“I—Look, can you not … can you please not be glib with me?”
“Requesting miracles now, are we?” Sabetha looked down and kicked a stone out of her path. “Look, I’m sorry. Contemplating ten days stuck together on the road. And the brothers being … you know. The whole thing has me feeling like a hedgehog, rolled up with my spikes out. Can’t help myself.”
“Oh, a hedgehog is absolutely the lastthing I would ever compare you to,” said Locke with a laugh.
“Interesting,” said Sabetha, “that I mention my own feelings, and you seem to think that what I’m after is reassurance concerning your perceptions.”
“But …” Locke felt another knot in his chest. Conversations with Sabetha always seemed to call his attention to malfunctioning internal mysteries he hadn’t previously known he possessed. “Look, come on, do you have to dissecteverything I say, pin it up like an anatomist and sift through it?”
“First I’m too glib, now I’m cutting too fine. Surely you should be pleased to be receiving such close attention to what you’re actually saying?”
“You know,” said Locke, feeling his hands shake nervously with the thought of what he was about to put in the open, “you knowthat when I’m around you I find it very easy to shove my foot into my mouth. Sometimes both feet. And you do see it.”
“Mmmmm,” she said.
“More than that. You make use of the advantage.”
“I do.” She looked at him strangely. “You fancy me.”
“That,” said Locke, feeling thunderstruck, “that is … really … not how I would have …”
“Not as grand in plain speech as it is up here?” She tapped her forehead.
“Sabetha, I … I value your good opinion more than anything in the world. It kills me not to have it. It kills me not to know whetherI have it. We’ve lived together all these years, and still there’s this fog between us. I don’t know what I did to put it there, but I would throw myself under a cart to lift it, believe me.”