“If you ever do anything like that,” said Locke, “I swear to all the gods, I will murder you.”
4
JUST AFTER the fourth hour of the afternoon, with the faintest warm drizzle sweating out of the graying sky, their wagon rolled through the mud beneath the stone arch of the Jalaan River Gate on the east side of Espara. Jean was back at the reins, and he bade their horses to halt for a squad of armed men in cloaks.
“What goes, Vireska?” said the evident leader, one of those graceful hulking types, the sort that gave every impression of being able to dance a minuet despite possession of a belly fit for carving into ham steaks. “We could set a water-clock by you. Dull trip, eh?”
“Just the way it ought to be,” said the caravan master as he shook hands with the watchman. The gratuity that instantly vanished into the heavy fellow’s pocket was generous; Vireska had discussed it back in Camorr and collected an equal portion from each wagon owner. “Now, when you’re poking through everything, watch-sergeant, just be especially delicate with the drugs and the hidden weapons, eh?”
“I promise not to keep you more than ten hours this time,” laughed the big Esparan. His men made an extremely cursory examination of the wagons, clearly more for the benefit of anyone watching than for the enforcement of the city’s customs laws.
“Welcome,” said one of the guards to Sabetha, who’d once again donned all her more modest clothing. “First time in Espara?”
“Actually, yes,” she said.
“Might we help you find anything?” said the big watch-sergeant, edging in next to his man.
“Oh, that would be so verykind of you,” she said, bubbling with girlish charm. Locke bit his tongue to stifle a snicker. “We’re looking for a man called Jasmer Moncraine. The Moncraine Company, the actors.”
“Why?” said the watch-sergeant. “You creditors?”
All the men behind him burst into laughter.
“Ah, no,” she said. “We’re players, from Camorr, come to join his troupe.”
“They got theaters in Camorr, miss?” said one of the guards. “I thought you was all more about, like, sharks bitin’ women in half.”
“I’d like to see that,” mumbled another watchman.
“There isan awful lot of that where we come from,” said Sabetha. “In fact, we spend more time touring than at home. Moncraine’s engaging us for the rest of the summer.”
“Well,” said the watch-sergeant, “In that case, best of luck. You can find some of the Moncraine Company at, uh, what’s that place with the olive tree torn out of its courtyard?”
“Gloriano’s Rooms,” said another guard.
“Right, right. Gloriano’s,” said the sergeant. “Look, you follow this lane straight down to the Temple of Venaportha, and just past it turn left, hear? Take that lane across the river, you’re in a place we call Solace Hill. Gloriano’s Rooms would be on your right. If you find gravestones on three sides, you’ve gone too far.”
“We’re obliged to you,” said Locke, while nursing a faint premonition that that might not, in the grand scheme of things, turn out to be entirely true.
They parted company with Vireska’s caravan and made their way into Espara, hewing to the watch-sergeant’s directions. It seemed to Locke that they all perked up considerably at finding themselves back in the familiar world of high stone walls, rain-dampened smoke, junk-strewn alleys, and people crammed elbow-to-elbow on the dry portions of the boulevards.
“Three cheers for a proper ale,” said Galdo wistfully. “In a proper tavern, that doesn’t have a fucking palisade built round it to keep out the bloody bog monster.”
“I think this is Solace Hill,” said Jean, as they entered a neighborhood that seemed to regress further from prosperity with every turn of the wagon wheels. The buildings grew lower, the windows became dirtier, and the lights grew fewer. “Look, that’s a graveyard, this Gloriano’s has to be close.”
They found it not a block down, the best-lit structure for some distance in any direction, though the illumination was perhaps unwise given the things it revealed about the condition of walls and roofs. A pair of city watchmen, looking soaked behind the misty glow of their lanterns, were standing in the turn to the inn-yard and impeding the passage of the Gentlemen Bastards’ wagon.
“Is there a problem, Constables?” called Jean.
“You don’t actually mean to turn in here?” said one of the men warily, as though he suspected himself the butt of a joke.
“I think we do,” said Jean.
“But this is the way to Gloriano’s inn-yard,” said the constable, even more warily.
“Pleased to hear it.”
“You delivering something?”
“Just ourselves,” said Jean.
“Gods above, you mean it,” said the constable. “I could tell you ain’t from here, even if I never heard your voice.” He and his companion stepped out of the way with exaggerated courtesy and walked on, shaking their heads.
Locke first heard the shouting as Jean brought them in under a sloping canvas awning that was more holes than fabric, next to a dark stable that contained only one horse. The animal looked at them as though in hope of rescue.
“What the hells is that noise?” said Sabetha.
It wasn’t any sort of row that Locke recognized. Fisticuffs, theft, murder, domestic quarrel—all of those things had familiar rhythms and notes, sounds he could have identified in a second. This was something stranger, and it seemed to be coming from just around the right-hand corner of the building.
“Jean, Sabetha, come quietly with me,” he said. “Sanzas, mind the horses. If they have any brains they might try to bolt.”
It didn’t occur to him until his boots hit the mud that he’d again done precisely what Sabetha had railed against: presumed leadership without hesitation. But damn it, this wasn’t a time for putting his life under a magnifying lens; it was a time for making sure they weren’t all about to be murdered.
“I shall break you, joint by joint,” bellowed a man with a deep, attention-seizing voice, “and drink your screams like a fine wine, and burn in brighter ecstasy with every … fading … whimper from your coward’s throat!”
“Holy shit,” said Locke. “No, wait. That’s … that’s from a play.”
“ Catalinus, Last Prince of Amor Peth,” whispered Jean.
Side by side, Locke, Jean, and Sabetha moved carefully around the corner. They found themselves facing a courtyard, the interior of three double-storied wings of the inn, with a vast ugly hole in the middle where something had been torn out of the ground.
A man and a woman sat off to one side, out of the light, watching a third man, who stood on the edge of the muddy hole with a bottle in either hand. This man was a prodigious physical specimen, surpassing Father Chains in girth and breadth, with a rain-slick crown of white hair pasted down around his creased face. He wore a loose gray robe and nothing else.
“I shall grind your bones to powder,” he hollered, transfixing the three Gentlemen Bastards with his gleaming eyes. “And with that dust I’ll make cement for paving stones, and for a hundred years to come you’ll have no rest beneath the crush of strange wheels and the tramp of strange boots! Drunkards will make their unclean water upon you, and I shall laugh to think of it, Catalinus! I shall laugh until I die, and Ishall die whole in body, wholly revenged upon thee!”
He flung forth his arms, perhaps intentionally, perhaps at random, and when he seemed to realize that he still held bottles in his hands he drank from them.
“Excuse me,” said Locke. Thunder rumbled overhead. The rain grew heavier. “We’re, ah, looking for the Moncraine Company.”
“Moncraine,” yelled the white-haired man, dropping one of his bottles and waving his arms to keep his balance at the edge of the hole. “Moncraine!”
“Are you Jasmer Moncraine?” said Jean.
“I, Jasmer Moncraine?” The man leapt down into the hole, which was about thigh-deep, raising a dark splash of water. He scrambled up the other side and came toward them, now thoroughly be-mucked from the waist down. “I am Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus, the greatest actor in a thousand miles, in a thousand years! Jasmer Moncraine wishes … on his best day … that he was worth a single drop … OF MY PISS!”