“They can’t hear you,” said Locke.
“Marauders! Sons of filth! Motherless bastards!” The man inside the box cackled. “It’s all one to me, though. You can’t break in here. Steal whatever you like from my gutless hirelings, sirrahs, but you’ll not have anything of mine!”
“Gods above,” said Locke. “Listen up, you heartless fucking weasel. Your fortress has wheels on it. About a mile to the east there are cliffs above the Amathel. We’ll unhitch you there and give your box a good shove over the edge.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Then you’d better practice flying.” Locke hopped up into the driver’s seat and took the reins. “Come on, let’s take shit-sauce here for the shortest trip of his life.”
Jean climbed up beside Locke. Locke urged the well-trained horses forward, and the coach began to roll.
“Now wait a minute,” their suddenly unwilling passenger bellowed. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Locke let him scream for about a hundred yards before he slowed the team back down.
“If you want to live,” said Locke, “go ahead and open the—”
The door banged open. The man who came out was about sixty, short and oval-bellied, with the eyes of a startled rabbit. His hat and dressing gown were crimson silk studded with gold buttons. Locke jumped down and glowered at him.
“Take that ludicrous thing off,” he growled.
The man quickly stripped to his undertunic. Locke gathered his finery, which reeked of sweat, and threw it into the carriage.
“Where’s the food and water?”
The man pointed to a storage compartment built into the outside rear of the carriage, just above the tailboard. Locke opened it, selected a few things for himself, then threw some of the neatly wrapped ration packages onto the dirt beside the road.
“Go wake your friends up and enjoy the walk,” said Locke as he climbed back up beside Jean. “Shouldn’t be more than a day or so until you reach the outer hamlets of Lashain. Or maybe someone will come along and take pity on you.”
“You bastards,” shouted the de-robed, de-carriaged man. “Thieving bastards! You’ll hang for this! I’ll see it done!”
“That’s a remote possibility,” said Locke. “But you know what’s a certainty? Next fire I need to start, I’m using your clothes to do it, asshole.”
He gave a cheery wave, and then the armored coach service was gathering speed along the road, bound not for Lashain but Karthain, the long way around the Amathel.
INTERLUDE
AURIN AND AMADINE
1
“WHY IN ALL the hells do you take this abuse?” said Jean as he and Jenora sat together over coffee the second morning after the arrival of the Gentlemen Bastards in Espara. “Dealing with Moncraine, the debts, the bullshit—”
“Those of us left are the stakeholders,” said Jenora. “We own shares in the common property, and shares of the profits, when those miraculously appear. Some of us saved for years to make these investments. If we walk away from Moncraine, we forfeit everything.”
“Ah.”
“Look at Alondo. He had a wild night at cards and he used the take to buy his claim in the troupe. That was three years ago. We were doing Ten Honest Turncoatsthen, and A Thousand Swords for Therim Peland The All-Murderers Ball.A dozen full productions a year, masques for Countess Antonia, festival plays, and we were touring out west, where the countryside’s not the gods-damned waste it is between here and Camorr. I mean, we had prospects; we weren’t out of our minds.”
“I never said you were.”
“It’s mostly hired players and the short-timers that evaporated on us. They don’t have any anchors except a weekly wage, and they can make that with Basanti. Hell, they’ll happily take less from him, because at least they’re sure to play.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said, staring into her mug as though it might conceal new answers. “I guess sometimes there’s just a darkness in someone. You hopeit’ll go away.”
“Moncraine, you mean.”
“If you could have seen him back in those days, I think you’d understand. You know about the Forty Corpses?”
“Um … if I say no, do I become the forty-first?”
“If I killed people, glass-eyes, Moncraine wouldn’t have lived long enough to be arrested. The Forty Corpses is what we call the forty famous plays that survived the fall of the empire. The big ones by all the famous Throne Therins … Lucarno, Viscora, that bunch.”
“Oh,” said Jean.
“They’re called corpses because they haven’t changed for four or five centuries. I mean, we love them, most of them, but they do moldera bit. They get recited like temple ritual, dry and lifeless. Except, when Moncraine was on, when Moncraine was good, he made the corpses jump out of their graves. It was like he was a spark and the whole troupe would catch fire from it. And when you’ve seen that, when you’ve been a part of it … I tell you, Jovanno, you’d put up with nearly anything if only you could have it again.”
“I am returned,” boomed a voice from the inn-yard door, “from the exile to which my pride had sentenced me!”
“Oh, gods below, you people actually did it,” said Jenora, leaping out of her chair. A man entered the common room, a big dark Syresti in dirty clothing, and cried out when he saw her.
“Jenora, my dusky vision, I knew that I could—”
Whatever he’d known was lost as Jenora’s open palm slammed into his cheek. Jean blinked; her arm had been a pale brown arc. He made a mental note that she was quick when angered.
“Jasmer,” she hollered, “you stupid, stubborn, bottle-sucking, lard-witted fuck!You nearly ruined us! It wasn’t your damn pride that put you in gaol, it was your fists!”
“Peace, Jenora,” muttered Moncraine. “Ow. I was sort of quoting a play.”
“ Aiiiiiaahhhhhhhh!” screamed Mistress Gloriano, rushing in from a side hall. “I don’t believe it! The Camorri got you out! And it’s more than you deserve, you lousy wretch! You lousy Syresti drunkard!”
“All’s well, Auntie, I’ve already hit him for both of us,” said Jenora.
“Oh, hell’s hungry kittens,” muttered Sylvanus, wandering in behind Mistress Gloriano. His bloodshot eyes and sleep-swept hair gave him the look of a man who’d been caught in a windstorm. “I see the guards at the Weeping Tower can be bribed after all.”
“Good morning to you too, Andrassus,” said Moncraine. “It warms the deep crevices of my heart to hear so many possible explanations for my release exceptthe thought that I might be innocent.”
“You’re as innocent as we convinced Boulidazi to pretend you are,” said Sabetha, entering from the street. She and Locke had left early that morning to hover around the Weeping Tower, ready to snatch Moncraine up as soon as he was released following his appearance in court.
“He did say some unexpected and handsome things,” said Moncraine.
“You going to call the meeting to order,” said Sabetha, “or should I?”
“I can break the news, gir—Verena. Thank you kindly.” Moncraine cleared his throat. “A moment of your time, gentlemen and ladies of the Moncraine Company. And you as well, Andrassus. And our, uh, benefactor and patient creditor, Mistress Gloriano. There are some … changes in the offing.”
“Sweet gods,” said Sylvanus, “you coal-skinned, life-ruining bastard, are you actually suggesting that gainful employment is about to get its hands around our throats again?”
“Sylvanus, I love you as I love my own Syresti blood,” said Moncraine, “but shut your dribbling booze-hole. And yes, Espara will have its production of the Moncraine Company’s The Republic of Thieves.”