The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves (173 page)

“We discussed splitting it,” he said.

“We did,” said Jean. “But that’s not what we’re doing.”

“Oh?”

“You’re going to drink it.” Jean set both of his hands on the table, palm down. “All
of it.”

“No,” said Locke.

“You don’t have a choice,” said Jean.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“We can’t take the chance of splitting it,” said Jean, his voice reasonable and controlled
in just the fashion that told Locke he was ready for instant action. “Better that
one of us be cured for certain, than for both of us to linger on and … die like that.”

“I’ll take my chances with lingering on,” said Locke.

“I won’t,” said Jean. “Please drink it, Locke.”

“Or what?”

“Or you know what,” said Jean. “You can’t overpower me. The reverse is definitely
not true.”

“So you’ll—”

“Awake or unconscious,” said Jean, “it’s yours. I don’t care. Drink the fucking antidote,
for the Crooked Warden’s sake.”

“I can’t,” said Locke.

“Then you force me to—”

“You don’t understand,” said Locke. “I didn’t say ‘won’t.’ I ‘
can’t
’.”

“What—”

“That’s just water in a vial I picked up in town.” Locke reached once more into his
pocket, withdrew an empty glass vial, and slowly set it down beside the fake. “I have
to say, knowing me the way you do, I’m surprised you agreed to let me pour your wine.”

“YOU
BASTARD
,” Jean roared, leaping to his feet.

“Gentleman Bastard.”

“You miserable fucking son of a
bitch
!” Jean was a blur as he moved, and Locke flinched backward in alarm. Jean snatched
up the table and flung it into the sea, scattering the remnants of their dinner across
the boat’s deck. “How could you? How could you do that to me?”

“I can’t watch you die,” said Locke flatly. “I can’t. You couldn’t ask me to—”

“So you didn’t even give me a choice!”

“You were going to fucking force-feed it to me!” Locke stood up, brushing crumbs and
chicken-bone fragments from his tunic. “I
knew
you’d try something like that. Do you blame me for doing it first?”

“Now I get to watch you die, is that it? Her, and now you? And this is a
favor
?”

Jean collapsed onto the deck, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob. Locke
knelt beside him and wrapped his arms around his shoulders.

“It is a favor,” said Locke. “A favor to me. You save my life all the time because
you’re an idiot and you don’t know any better. Let me … let me do it for you, just
once. Because you actually deserve it.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Jean whispered. “You son of a fucking bitch, how
can you do this? I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off.
Both at once.”

“Ah,” said Locke. “Near as I can tell, that’s the definition of ‘family’ right there.”

“But you’ll die,” whispered Jean.

“It was always going to happen,” said Locke. “It was always going to happen, and the
only reason it didn’t happen before now … is … you, actually.”

“I hate this,” said Jean.

“I do too. But it’s done. I suppose I have to feel okay about it.”

I feel calm, he thought. I guess I can say that. I feel calm.

“What do we do now?”

“Same as we planned,” said Locke. “Somewhere, anywhere, laziest possible speed. Up
the coast, just roaming. No one after us. No one in the way, no one to rob. We’ve
never really done this sort of thing before.” Locke grinned. “Hell, I honestly don’t
know if we’ll be any
good
at it.”

“And what if you—”

“When I do I do,” said Locke. “Forgive me.”

“Yes,” said Jean. “And no. Never.”

“I understand, I think,” said Locke. “Get up and give me a hand with the anchor, would
you?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“This coast is so gods-damned old,” said Locke. “Falling apart. Seen it, seen everywhere
like it. Let’s see if we can’t get this thing pointed somewhere else.”

He stood up, keeping one of his hands on Jean’s shoulder.

“Somewhere new.”

Nautical enthusiasts, of both the armchair and the hands-on persuasion, are bound
to have noticed that a great deal of folding, spindling, and mutilating has taken
place within
Red Seas Under Red Skies
where the jargon of the sea is concerned.

In some instances I can claim the honorable excuses: that I have abstracted for the
sake of reader comprehension or adjusted for the cultural and technological peculiarities
of Locke’s world. Others can only be explained by that most traditional affliction
of authors—that I have screwed up somewhere and have no idea what I’m talking about.
Things always work out best for the both of us, dear reader, when you can’t tell the
difference. Toward that end, my fingers are crossed.

This, then, concludes the second volume of the Gentleman Bastard sequence.

Scott Lynch

New Richmond, Wisconsin

January 26, 2007

Once more to the amazing Jenny, for being so many things over the years—girlfriend,
best friend, first reader, constructive critic, and, at long last, wife.

To Anne Groell, Gillian Redfearn, and Simon Spanton, not only for being generally
and specifically brilliant, but for not murdering me.

To Jo Fletcher, again with the not murdering me. Cheers!

To everyone at Orion Books who made my first (one can only hope) trip to England a
joy, and tolerated me despite my wretched state of illness; especially to Jon Weir,
faithful whip-cracker and guide.

To all the UK booksellers who bent over backward promoting and talking up
The Lies of Locke Lamora
when it was just a newborn baby book, not yet walking on its own two feet, so many
thanks.

To Desiree, Jeff, and Cleo.

To Deanna Hoak, Lisa Rogers, Josh Pasternak, John Joseph Adams, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah
Monette, Jason McCray, Joe Abercrombie, Tom Lloyd, Jay Lake, GRRM, and so many others.

To Loki, Valkyrie, Peepit, Artemis, and Thor, the best contingent of small household
mammals ever assembled.

PLACE TEN DOZEN
hungry orphan thieves in a dank burrow of vaults and tunnels beneath what used to
be a graveyard, put them under the supervision of one partly crippled old man, and
you will soon find that governing them becomes a delicate business.

The Thiefmaker, skulking eminence of the orphan kingdom beneath Shades’ Hill in old
Camorr, was not yet so decrepit that any of his grimy little wards could hope to stand
alone against him. Nonetheless, he was alert to the doom that lurked in the clutching
hands and wolfish impulses of a mob—a mob that he, through his training, was striving
to make more predatory still with each passing day. The veneer of order that his life
depended on was insubstantial as damp paper at the best of times.

His presence itself could enforce absolute obedience in a certain radius, of course.
Wherever his voice could carry and his own senses seize upon misbehavior, his orphans
were tame. But to keep his ragged company in line when he was drunk or asleep or hobbling
around the city on business, it was essential that he make them eager partners in
their own subjugation.

He molded most of the biggest, oldest boys and girls in Shades’ Hill into a sort of
honor guard, granting them shoddy privileges and stray scraps of near-respect. More
important, he worked hard to keep every single one of them in constant deadly terror
of himself. No failure was ever met with anything but pain or the promise of pain,
and the seriously insubordinate had a way of vanishing. Nobody had any illusions that
they had gone to a better place.

So he ensured that his chosen few, steeped in fear, had no outlet save to vent their
frustrations (and thus enforce equivalent fear) upon the next oldest and largest set
of children. These in turn would oppress the next weakest class of victim. Step by
step the misery was shared out, and the Thiefmaker’s authority would cascade like
a geological pressure out to the meekest edges of his orphan mass.