“But—I have been worked and tested as sorely as you,” said Locke, fighting to keep his voice down. “As sorely as anyone! Do you remember how long it took me to pay thisoff?” He reached down the front of his tunic and pulled out his shark’s tooth, ensconced in its little leather bag. “Gods above, I could have a city house and a carriage for the money I poured into this damn thing. And I served as many apprenticeships as—”
“I’m not talking about your training, Locke, I know what Chains has done to us all. I’m talking about the way you accepted everything as you accept your own skin. Something natural and undeserving of reflection. Well, let me assure you that the only woman in a house of men has frequent cause for reflection.”
“This is a complete surprise to me,” said Locke.
“I know,” she said softly. “That’s a problem.”
She stared up at the sky, where one of the moons was emerging from behind a low haze of clouds, and Locke had no idea how to begin responding to her.
“A week to go,” she said at last. “A long, slow week of all the pleasures I named earlier. We’re going to be tired, sore, smelly, and bitten half to death by the time we reach Espara. I would … I want to talk to you again, Locke, but I can’t bring myself to make it a subject of hopeful anticipation night after night under these circumstances. Neither of us will be at our best.”
“And this merits our best,” he said grudgingly.
“I think it does. So can we keep it simple while we’re traveling? Eyes on the ground, asses in our seats, and all of these … matters tabled until a later date?”
“You think it’s fair to dump this in my lap and then request a conversational truce?”
“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” she said. “Just necessary.”
“Well, then. If nothing else, it seems I’ll have a lot of time to ruminate on an explanation for you—”
“An explanation? You think what I want out of you is some sort of defense? Surely you can see that I’ve explained you already. What comes next is—”
“Yes?”
“I won’t say. I think I need youto tell me.”
“All you have to do is—”
“No,” she said sharply. “I’ve told you everything you need to know to figure out what comes next. If my words really are like smoldering coals, Locke, then let these ones smolder. Sift them, and bring me an answer sometime after we reach Espara. Bring me a goodanswer.”
3
ESPARA, FORMERLY a seat of prestige only one step below Therim Pel itself, had descended from its imperial years the way some men and women descend into middle-aged lethargy, discarding the vigor and ambition of youth like a suit of clothes that can no longer be wriggled into.
Locke caught his first glimpse of the place just after noon on the tenth day, when the caravan turned the bend between two ruin-studded hills and entered the familiar, irregular green-and-brown whorls of a farming landscape. On the southern horizon lay the faint shapes of towers under curling gray smears of smoke.
“Espara,” said Anatoly Vireska. “Right where I left it. No more stops for rest, my young friends. Before the sun sets you’ll be in the city looking for your actor fellows.”
“Well done, caravan master,” said Locke, who had the reins while Jean was snoring gently under the tarp at the rear of the wagon. “Not what I’d call a scenic tour, but you’ve brought us through without a scratch.”
“When the crop of bandits is thin, it’s a restful little walk. Now it’s back to dodging carriages, breathing smoke, and paying rent for the beds you sleep in, eh?”
“Gods be praised,” said Locke.
“City creatures are the strangest of all,” said Vireska with a friendly shake of his head. He moved off to visit the rest of the wagons.
All the Gentlemen Bastards, more or less as footsore, ass-sore, unwashed, and drained of blood as Sabetha had predicted, had given up on walking this morning. Calo and Galdo leaned against each other, watching the landscape roll by at its strolling pace, while Sabetha was absorbed in the copy of The Republic of Thievesshe’d picked up before they’d left Camorr.
“Is the play any good?” said Galdo.
“I think so,” said Sabetha, “except the final act has been torn out of this folio, and half the pages have stains blotting out some of the lines. I keep imagining that every scene ends with the characters hurling cups of coffee at one another.”
“Sounds like my kind of play,” said Calo.
“Are there any decent roles?” said Galdo.
“They’re all decent,” said Sabetha. “Better than decent. I think they’re very romantic. We should have names like this, like all the heroes in these plays, all the famous bandits and sorcerers and emperors.”
“Most people could give half a dry shit for having an emperor’s name,” said Galdo. “It’s the wealth and power they’d want.”
“What I mean,” said Sabetha, “is that we should have aliases like out of the old stories. Big, grand titles like the Ten Honest Turncoats, you know? Red Jessa, the Duke of Knaves. Amadine, the Queen of Shadows.”
“I think Verena Gallante’s a fine alias,” said Locke.
“No, I mean bigand important, and uncommon. Not something you get called to your face. The sort of alias that people whisper when something unbelievable happens. ‘Oh, gods, this can only be the work of the Duke of Knaves!’ ”
“Heavens,” said Galdo in a deep, dramatic voice, “only one man living could have squeezed forth such a gleaming brown jewel—this is the work of Squatting Calo, the Midnight Shitter!”
“You two want for imagination,” said Sabetha.
“Not at all,” said Galdo. “The lower the enterprise, the hotter the fire of our invention burns.”
“Are you going a bit stir-crazy, Sabetha?” said Locke, secretly pleased to hear the energy in her voice after so many days of brooding tedium.
“Maybe I am. I’ve been stuck in this wagon counting Sanza farts for a week; maybe I’m due a little flight of fancy. I mean, wouldn’t it be grand, to have a legend that grew while you were alive to enjoy it? To sit in a tavern and hear all the people around you speaking of what you’d done, with no notion that you were among them as flesh and blood?”
“I can sit in a tavern and be ignored any time I please,” muttered Calo.
“I want to see the Kingdom of the Marrows someday,” said Sabetha. “Game my way from city to city … on the arms of nobles, emptying their pockets as I go, charming them witless. I’d be like a force of nature. They’d come up with some elegant title for their shared affliction. “It was her … it was … it was the Rose.”
Sabetha rolled this off her tongue, obviously savoring it.
“The Rose of the Marrows,they’ll say. ‘The Rose of the Marrows has been my ruin!’ And they’ll tear their hair out explaining everything to their wives and bankers, while I ride on to the next city.”
“Are we all going to need stupid nicknames, then?” said Calo. “We could be … the Shrubs of the North.”
“The Weeds of Vintila,” said Galdo.
“And if you’re a rose,” said Calo, “Locke’s going to need something as well.”
“He can be a tulip,” said Galdo. “Delicate little tulip.”
“Nah, if she’s the rose, he can be her thorn.” Calo snapped his fingers. “The Thorn of Camorr! Now that’s got some shine to it!”
“That’d the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” said Locke.
“We can do it as soon as we get home,” said Calo. “Disguise ourselves. Drop hints in bars. Tell stories here and there. Give us a month and everyone will be talking about the Thorn of Camorr. Even the ones that don’t know shit will just tell more lies, so they can sound like they’re clued in on the latest.”