His grab for the attacker was good; he slipped his left arm around the man’s neck at the exact instant he shoved his blade up against the soft junction of neck and chin on the other side. “Drop your weapon or I’ll—” was all he had time to say, however, before the man did the absolute worst thing possible. He jerked forward in an attempt to break Locke’s hold, perhaps reflexively, not realizing the angle at which Locke’s blade was poised. Whether it was supreme optimism or miserable foolishness, Locke would never know, as the man sliced half the contents of his neck open and died that instant, spewing blood. A weapon clattered to the stones from his limp fingers.
Locke put his hands up in disbelief and let the corpse drop, only to find himself facing Jean, who was breathing heavily over the unmoving form of his own opponent.
“Wait a minute,” said Locke, “you mean—”
“Accident,” said Jean. “I caught his knife, we fought a bit, and he got it beneath his own rib cage.”
“Gods damn it,” Locke muttered, flicking blood from his right hand. “You try to keep a bastard alive, and look what happens—”
“Crossbows,” said Jean. He pointed to the ground, where Locke’s adjusting eyes could see the dim shapes of two small hand crossbows. Alley-pieces, the sort of thing you used within ten yards or not at all. “Grab them. There may be more of them after us.”
“Hell.” Locke grabbed one of the bows and gingerly handed the other to Jean. The little quarrels might be poisoned; the thought of handling someone else’s envenomed weapon in the dark made his skin crawl. But Jean was right; they’d need the advantage if they had other pursuers.
“I say discretion is a pastime for other people,” said Locke. “Let’s run our asses off.”
They sprinted at a wild tear through the forgotten places of the Golden Steps, north to the edge of the vast Elderglass plateau, where they scrambled down flight after flight of nauseatingly wobbly wooden steps, glancing frantically above and below for pursuit or ambush. The world was a dizzy whirl around Locke by the middle of the staircase, painted in the surreal colors of fire and alien glass. Out on the harbor the fourth and final ship of the festival was bursting into incandescence, a sacrifice of wood and pitch and canvas before hundreds of small boats packed with priests and revelers.
Down to the feet of the stairs and across the wooden platforms of the inner docks they stumbled, past the occasional drunkard or beggar, waving their daggers and crossbows wildly. Before them was their pier, long and empty, home only to a long stack of crates. No beggars, no drunks. Their boat bobbed welcomingly on the waves, just a hundred feet away now, brightly lit by the glare of the inferno.
Stack of crates, Locke thought, and by then it was too late.
Two men stepped from the shadows as Locke and Jean passed, from the most obvious ambush spot possible.
Locke and Jean whirled together; only the fact that they were carrying their stolen crossbows in their hands gave them any chance to bring them up in time. Four arms flew out; four men standing close enough to hold hands drew on their targets. Four fingers quivered, each separated from their triggers by no more than the width of a single droplet of sweat.
Locke Lamora stood on the pier in Tal Verrar with the hot wind of a burning ship at his back and the cold bite of a loaded crossbow’s bolt at his neck.
14
HE GRINNED, gasping for breath, and concentrated on holding his own crossbow level with the left eye of his opponent; they were close enough that they would catch most of one another’s blood, should they both twitch their fingers at the same time.
“Be reasonable,” said the man facing him. Beads of sweat left visible trails as they slid down his grime-covered cheeks and forehead. “Consider the disadvantages of your situation.”
Locke snorted. “Unless your eyeballs are made of iron, the disadvantage is mutual. Wouldn’t you say so, Jean?”
Jean and his foe were toe-to-toe with their crossbows similarly poised. Not one of them could miss at this range, not if all the gods above or below the heavens willed it otherwise.
“All four of us would seem…to be up to our balls in quicksand,” said Jean between breaths.
On the water behind them, the old galleon groaned and creaked as the roaring flames consumed it from the inside out. Night was made day for hundreds of yards around; the hull was crisscrossed with the white-orange lines of seams coming apart. Smoke boiled out of those hellish cracks in little black eruptions, the last shuddering breaths of a vast wooden beast dying in agony. The four men stood on their pier, strangely alone in the midst of light and noise that was drawing the attention of the entire city. Nobody in the boats was paying any attention to them.
“Lower your piece, for the love of the gods,” said Locke’s opponent. “We’ve been instructed not to kill you, if we don’t have to.”
“And I’m sure you’d be honest if it were otherwise, of course,” said Locke. His smile grew. “I make it a point never to trust men with weapons at my windpipe. Sorry.”
“Your hand will start to shake long before mine does.”
“I’ll rest the tip of my quarrel against your nose when I get tired. Who sent you after us? What are they paying you? We’re not without funds; a happy arrangement could be reached.”
“Actually,” said Jean, “I know who sent them.”
“What? Really?” Locke flicked a glance at Jean before locking eyes with his adversary once again.
“And an arrangement has been reached, but I wouldn’t call it happy.”
“Ah…Jean, I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“No.” Jean raised one hand, palm out, to the man opposite him. He then slowly, carefully shifted his aim to his left—until his crossbow was pointing at Locke’s head. The man he’d previously been threatening blinked in surprise. “You’ve lost me, Locke.”
“Jean,” said Locke, the grin vanishing from his face, “this isn’t funny.”
“I agree. Hand your piece over to me.”
“Jean—”
“Hand it over now. Smartly. You there, are you some kind of moron? Get that thing out of my face and point it at him.”
Jean’s former opponent licked his lips nervously, but didn’t move. Jean ground his teeth together. “Look, you sponge-witted dock ape, I’m doing your job for you. Point your crossbow at my gods-damned partner so we can get off this pier!”
“Jean, I would describe this turn of events as less than helpful,” said Locke, and he looked as though he might say more, except that Jean’s opponent chose that moment to take Jean’s advice.
It seemed to Locke that sweat was now cascading down his face, as though his own treacherous moisture were abandoning the premises before anything worse happened.
“There. Three on one.” Jean spat on the pier. “You gave me no choice but to cut a deal with the employer of these gentlemen before we set out—gods damn it, you forced me. I’m sorry. I thought they’d make contact before they drew down on us. Now give your weapon over.”
“Jean, what the hell do you think you’re—”
“Don’t. Don’t say another fucking thing. Don’t try to finesse me; I know you too well to let you have your say. Silence, Locke. Finger off the trigger and hand it over.”
Locke stared at the steel-tipped point of Jean’s quarrel, his mouth open in disbelief. The world around him seemed to fade to that tiny, gleaming point, alive with the orange reflection of the inferno blazing in the anchorage behind him. Jean would have given him a hand signal if he were lying…. Where the hell was the hand signal?
“I don’t believe this,” he whispered. “This is impossible.”
“This is the last time I’m going to say this, Locke.” Jean ground his teeth together and held his aim steady, directly between Locke’s eyes. “Take your finger off the trigger and hand over your gods-damned weapon. Right now.”
III
CARDS ON THE TABLE
“I am hard pressed on my right; my center is giving way; situation e
xcellent. I am attacking.”
General Ferdinand Foch
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SCOURGING THE SEA OF BRASS
1
JAFFRIM RODANOV WADED in the shallows by the hull of an overturned fishing boat, listening to the waves break against its shattered planks as they washed over his ankles. The sand and water of Prodigal Bay were pristine this far from the city. No layers of night soil slimed the water, no rusting metal scraps or pottery shards littered the bottom. No corpses floated as grim rafts for squawking birds.
Twilight, on the seventh day of Aurim. Drakasha gone for a week now. A thousand miles away, Jaffrim thought, a mistake was being made.
Ydrena whistled. She was leaning against the hull of the abandoned fishing boat, neither too close nor too far from him, merely emphasizing by her presence that Rodanov was not alone, and that his attendance at this meeting was known to his crew.
Jacquelaine Colvard had arrived.
She left her first mate beside Ydrena, shrugged out of her own boots, and waded into the water without hiking up her breeches. Old and unbent Colvard, who’d been sacking ships in these waters when he’d been a boy with his nose buried in musty scrolls. Before he’d even seen a ship that wasn’t inked onto a sheet of parchment.
“Jaffrim,” she said. “Thank you for humoring me.”
“There’s only one thing you could want to talk about at the moment,” said Rodanov.
“Yes. And it’s on your mind too, isn’t it?”
“It was a mistake to give Drakasha our oaths.”
“Was it?”
Rodanov hooked his thumbs into his sword-belt and looked down at the darkening water, the ripples where his pale ankles vanished into it. “I was generous when I should have been cynical.”
“So you fancy yourself the only one who had the power to forbid this?”
“I could have withheld my oath.”
“But then it would have been four against one, with you as the one,” said Colvard, “and Drakasha would have gone north looking over her shoulder all the way.”
Rodanov felt a cold excitement in his gut.
“I’ve noticed curious things, these past few days,” she continued. “Your crew has been spending less time in the city. You’ve been taking on water. And I’ve seen you on your quarterdeck, testing your instruments. Checking your backstaffs.”
His excitement rose. Out here alone, had she come to confront him or abet him? Could she be mad enough to put herself in his reach, if it was the former?
“You know, then,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“Do you intend to talk me out of it?”
“I intend to see that it’s done right.”
“Ah.”
“You have someone aboard the Poison Orchid, don’t you?”
Though taken aback, Rodanov found himself in no mood to dissemble.
“If you’ll tell me how you know,” he said, “I won’t insult you by denying it.”
“It was an educated guess. After all, you tried to place someone aboard my ship once.”
“Ah,” he said, sucking air through his teeth. “So Riela didn’t die in a boat accident after all.”
“Yes and no,” said Colvard. “It happened in a boat, at least.”
“Do you—”
“Blame you? No. You’re a cautious man, Jaffrim, as I am a fundamentally cautious woman. It’s our shared caution that brings us here this evening.”
“Do you want to come with?”
“No,” said Colvard. “And my reasons are practical. First, that the Sovereign is ready for sea while the Draconic is not. Second, that two of us putting out together would cause…an inconvenient degree of speculation when Drakasha fails to return.”
“There’ll be speculation regardless. And there’ll be confirmation. My crew won’t bite their tongues forever.”
“But anything could have happened, to bring one and one together on the high seas,” said Colvard. “If we put out in a squadron, collusion will be the only reasonable possibility.”
“And I suppose it’s just coincidence,” said Jaffrim, “that even several days since you first spotted my preparations, the Draconic still isn’t ready for sea?”
“Well—”
“Spare me, Jacquelaine. I was ready to do this before we came here tonight. Just don’t imagine that you’ve somehow finessed me into going in your place.”
“Jaffrim. Peace. So long as this arrow hits the target, it doesn’t matter who pulls back the string.” She unbound her gray hair and let it fly free about her shoulders in the muggy breeze. “What are your intentions?”
“Obvious, I should think. Find her. Before she does enough damage to give Stragos what he wants.”
“And should you run her down, what then? Polite messages, broadside to broadside?”
“A warning. A last chance.”
“An ultimatum for Drakasha?” Her frown turned every line on her face near-vertical. “Jaffrim, you know too well how she’ll react to any threat. Like a netted shark. If you try to get close to a creature in that state, you’ll lose a hand.”
“A fight, then. I suppose we both know it’ll come to that.”
“And the outcome of that fight?”
“My ship is the stronger and I have eighty more souls to spare. It won’t be pretty, but I intend to make it mathematical.”
“Zamira slain, then.”
“That’s what tends to happen—”
“Assuming you allow her the courtesy of death in battle.”
“Allow?”
“Consider,” said Colvard, “that while Zamira’s course of action is too dangerous to tolerate, her logic was impeccable in one respect.”
“And that is?”
“Merely killing her, plus this Ravelle and Valora, would only serve to bandage a wound that already festers. The rot will deepen. We need to sate Maxilan Stragos’ ambition, not just foil it temporarily.”
“Agreed. But I’m losing my taste for subtlety as fast as I’m depleting my supply, Colvard. I’m going to be blunt with Drakasha. Grant me the same courtesy.”
“Stragos needs a victory not for the sake of his own vanity, but to rouse the people of his city. If that victory is lurking in the waters near Tal Verrar, and if that victory is colorful enough, what need would he have to trouble us down here?”
“We put a sacrifice on the altar,” Rodanov whispered. “We put Zamira on the altar.”
“After Zamira does some damage. After she raises just enough hell to panic the city. If the notorious pirate, the infamous rogue Zamira Drakasha, with a five-thousand solari bounty on her head, were to be paraded through Tal Verrar in chains…brought to justice so quickly after foolishly challenging the city once again…”
“Stragos victorious. Tal Verrar united in admiration.” Rodanov sighed. “Zamira hung over the Midden Deep in a cage.”
“Satisfaction in every quarter,” said Colvard.
“I may not be able to take her alive, though.”
“Whatever you hand over to the archon would be of equal value. Corpse or quick, alive or dead, he’ll have his trophy, and the Verrari would swarm the streets to see it. It would be best, I suspect, to let him have what’s left of the Poison Orchid as well.”
“I do the dirty work. Then hand him the victor’s laurels.”
“And the Ghostwinds will be spared.”
Rodanov stared out across the waters of the bay for some time before speaking again. “So we presume. But we have no better notions.”
“When will you leave?”
“The morning tide.”
“I don’t envy you the task of navigating the Sovereign through the Trader’s Gate—”
“I don’t envy myself. I’ll take the Parlor Passage.”
“Even by day, Jaffrim?”
“Hours count. I refuse to see any more wasted.” He turned for shore, to retrieve his boots and be on his way. “Can’t buy in for the last hand if you don’t get th
ere in time to take a chair.”
2
FEELING THE hot sting of sudden tears in his eyes, Locke slipped his finger away from the trigger of the alley-piece and slowly put it up in the air.
“Will you at least tell me why?” he said.
“Later.” Jean didn’t lower his own weapon. “Give me the crossbow. Slowly. Slowly!”
Locke’s arm was shaking; the nervous reaction had lent an unwanted jerkiness to his movements. Concentrating, trying to keep his emotions under control, Locke passed the bow over to Jean.
“Good,” said Jean. “Keep your hands up. You two brought rope, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got him under my bolt. Tie him up. Get his hands and his feet, and make the knots tight.”
One of their ambushers pointed his own crossbow into the air and fumbled for rope in a jacket pocket. The other lowered his bow and produced a knife. His eyes had just moved from Locke to his associate when Jean made his next move.
With his own bow in one hand and Locke’s in the other, he calmly pivoted and put a bolt into the head of each of their attackers.
Locke heard the sharp twak-twak of the double release, but it took several seconds for full comprehension of its meaning to travel from his eyes to the back of his skull. He stood there shaking, jaw hanging open, while the two strangers spurted blood, twitched, and died. One of them reflexively curled a finger around the trigger of his weapon. With a final twak that made Locke jump, a bolt whizzed into the darkness.
“Jean, you—”
“How difficult was it to give me the damn weapon?”
“But you…you said—”
“I said…” Jean grabbed him by his lapels and shook him. “What do you mean ‘I said,’ Locke? Why were you paying attention to what I was saying?”
“You didn’t—”
“Gods, you’re shaking. You believed me? How could you believe me?” Jean released him and stared at him, aghast. “I thought you were just playing along too intently!”
“You didn’t give me a hand signal, Jean! What the hell was I supposed to think?”