The Gentleman Bastard Series (41 page)

“What’ll they be worth,” said Bug, “once they’re eaten, and they come out the other end?”

“You’re welcome to take measurements,” said Calo. “Grab a scale.”

“And a scoop,” added Galdo.

The Sanzas spent the meal picking at a seasoned omelette topped with minced sheep’s kidneys—usually a favorite with the whole table. But today, though they all agreed it was their best effort in weeks—topping even the celebration of their first success in the Salvara game—the savor
seemed to have evaporated. Only Bug ate with real vigor, and his attention was largely concentrated on Jean’s plate of tarts.

“Look at me,” he said with his mouth half-full. “I’m worth more with every bite!”

Quiet half-smiles met his clowning, and nothing more; the boy “harrumphed” in annoyance and banged his fists on the table. “Well, if none of you want to eat,” he said, “why don’t we get on with planning how we’re going to dodge the axe tonight?”

“Indeed,” said Jean.

“Too right,” added Calo.

“Yes,” said Galdo, “what’s the game and how do we play it?”

“Well.” Locke pushed his plate away, crumpled his cloth napkin, and threw it into the center of the table. “For starters, we need to use the damn Broken Tower rooms again. It seems the stairs aren’t through with us just yet.”

Jean nodded. “What will we do with the place?”

“That’s where you and I will be when Anjais comes looking to collect us, at the ninth hour. And that’s where we’ll stay, after he’s thoroughly convinced that we have a very honest reason for not going with him.”

“What reason would that be?” asked Calo.

“A very colorful one,” said Locke. “I need you and Galdo to pay a quick visit to Jessaline d’Aubart this afternoon. I need help from a black alchemist for this. Here’s what you tell her.…”

2

THE ILLICIT apothecary shop of Jessaline d’Aubart and her daughter Janellaine was located above a scribe’s collective in the respectable Fountain Bend neighborhood. Calo and Galdo stepped onto the scribing floor at just past the second hour of the afternoon. Here, a dozen men and women were hunched over wide wooden boards, working quills and salt and charcoal sticks and drying sponges back and forth like automatons. A clever arrangement of mirrors and skylights let the natural light of day in to illuminate their work. There were few tradesfolk in Camorr more penny-conscious than journeymen scriveners.

At the rear of the first floor was a winding staircase, guarded by a tough-looking young woman who feigned boredom while fingering weapons beneath her brocaded brown coat. The Sanza twins established their bona fides with a combination of hand gestures and copper barons
that made their way into the young woman’s coat pockets. She tugged on a bell-rope beside the stairs, then waved them up.

On the second floor there was a reception room, windowless, walls and floor alike paneled with a golden hardwood that retained a faint aroma of pine lacquer. A tall counter divided the room precisely in half; there were no chairs on the customer side, and nothing at all on display on the merchant’s side: just a single locked door.

Jessaline stood behind the counter—a striking woman in her midfifties, with a tumbling cascade of charcoal-colored hair and dark, wary eyes nestled in laugh-lines. Janellaine, half her age, stood to her mother’s right with a crossbow pointed just over Calo and Galdo’s heads. It was an indoor murder-piece, lightweight and low power, which almost certainly meant some hideous poison on the quarrel. Neither Sanza was particularly bothered; this was business as usual for a black alchemist.

“Madam d’Aubart and Miss d’Aubart,” said Calo, bowing from the waist, “your servants.”

“Not to mention,” said Galdo, “still very much available.”

“Master Sanza and Master Sanza,” said the elder d’Aubart, “pleased to see you.”

“Although we are,” said Janellaine, “still very much disinclined.”

“Perhaps you’d care to buy something, though?” Jessaline folded her hands on the counter and raised one eyebrow.

“As it happens, a friend of ours needs something special.” Calo fished a coin purse from under his waistcoat and held it in plain view without opening it.

“Special?”

“Or perhaps not so much special as specific. He’s got to get sick.
Very
sick.”

“Far be it from me to drive away business, my dears,” said the elder d’Aubart, “but three or four bottles of rum would do the trick at a fraction of the price for anything I could give you.”

“Ah, not
that
sort of sick,” said Galdo. “He’s got to be in a bad way, like to knocking on the Death Goddess’ bedchamber and asking if he can come in. And then he’s got to be able to recover his strength after playing ill for a while. A sort of mummer’s sick, if you will.”

“Hmmm,” said Janellaine. “I don’t know if we have anything that works quite like that, at least not on hand.”

“When,” said Jessaline, “would your friend require a solution by?”

“We were sort of hoping to walk out of here with one,” said Calo.

“We don’t brew miracles, my dears.” Jessaline drummed her fingers on her countertop. “Contrary to all common belief. We
do
prefer a bit of notice for something like this. Messing about with someone’s inside—fit to ill and then fit again in the span of a few hours … well, that’s delicate.”

“We’re not Bondsmagi,” added Janellaine.

“Praise the gods for that,” said Galdo, “but it’s
very
pressing.”

“Well,” sighed Jessaline, “perhaps we can bang something together. A bit on the crude, but it might do the trick.”

“Barrow-robber’s blossom,” said her daughter.

“Yes.” Jessaline nodded. “And Somnay pine, after.”

“I believe we’ve both in the shop,” Jannelaine said. “Shall I check?”

“Do, and hand over that alley-piece while you’re back there.”

Janellaine passed the crossbow to her mother, then unlocked the door at the rear of the room and disappeared, closing it behind her once again. Jessaline set the weapon gently down atop the counter, keeping one longfingered hand on the tiller.

“You wound us, madam,” said Calo. “We’re harmless as kittens.”

“More so,” said Galdo. “Kittens have claws and piss on things indiscriminately.”

“It’s not just you, boys. It’s the city. Whole place is like to boil, what with Nazca getting clipped. Old Barsavi’s got to have some retribution in the works. Gods know who this Gray King is or what he wants, but I’m more worried by the day for what might come up my stairs.”

“It
is
a messy time,” said Calo.

Janellaine returned, with two small pouches in her hands. She locked the door behind her, passed the pouches to her mother, and picked up the crossbow once again.

“Well,” said the elder d’Aubart, “here’s what it is, then. Your friend takes this, the red pouch. It’s barrow-robber’s blossom, a sort of purple powder. In the red pouch, remember. Put it in water. It’s an emetic, if the word means anything to you.”

“Nothing pleasant,” said Galdo.

“Five minutes after he drinks it, he gets an ache in the belly. Ten minutes and he gets wobbly at the knees. Fifteen minutes and he starts vomiting up every meal he’s had for the past week. Won’t be pretty. Have buckets close at hand.”

“And it’ll look absolutely real?” asked Calo.

“Look? Sweetmeat, it’ll be as real as it gets. You ever see anyone feign vomiting?”

“Yes,” said the Sanzas in perfect unison.

“He does this thing with chewed-up oranges,” added Galdo.

“Well, your friend won’t be feigning
this
. Any physiker in Camorr would swear it was a real and natural distress. You can’t even see the barrow-robber’s blossom once it comes up; it dissolves quickly.”

“And then,” said Calo, “what about the other pouch?”

“This is Somnay pine bark. Crumble it and steep it in a tea. It’s the perfect counter for the purple blossom; it’ll cancel it right out. But the blossom will
already
have done its work; keep that in mind. The bark won’t put food back in his belly, or give back the vigor he loses while he’s retching his guts out. He’s going to be weak and sore for at least an evening or two.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Calo, “by our own peculiar definition of wonderful. What do we owe you?”

“Three crowns, twenty solons,” said Jessaline. “And that’s only because you were old Chains’ boys. This isn’t much by way of alchemy, just refined and purified, but the powders are hard to get hold of.”

Calo counted out twenty gold tyrins from his purse and set them atop the counter in a vertical stack. “Here’s five crowns, then. With the understanding that this transaction is best forgotten by everyone involved.”

“Sanza,” said Jessaline d’Aubart without humor, “every purchase at my shop is forgotten, as far as the outside world is concerned.”

“Then this one,” said Calo, adding four more tyrins to the pile, “needs to stay
extra
forgotten.”

“Well, if you really want to reinforce the point …” She pulled a wooden scraper from beneath the counter and used it to pull the coins over the back edge, into what sounded like a leather bag. She was careful not to touch the coins themselves; black alchemists rarely got to be her age if they relaxed their paranoia toward all things touched, tasted, or smelled.

“You have our thanks,” said Galdo. “And that of our friend, as well.”

“Oh, don’t count on that,” Jessaline d’Aubart chuckled. “Give him the red pouch first,
then
see what a grateful frame of mind it puts him in.”

3

“GET ME a glass of water, Jean.” Locke stared out the canal-side window of the seventh-floor room, as the buildings of southern Camorr grew long black shadows toward the east. “It’s time to take my medicine. I’m guessing it’s close on twenty minutes to nine.”

“Already set,” said Jean, passing over a tin cup with a cloudy lavender
residue swirling in it. “That stuff did dissolve in a blink, just like the Sanzas said.”

“Well,” he said, “here’s to deep pockets poorly guarded. Here’s to true alchemists, a strong stomach, a clumsy Gray King, and the luck of the Crooked Warden.”

“Here’s to living out the night,” said Jean, miming the clink of a cup against Locke’s own.

“Mmm.” Locke sipped hesitantly, then tilted the cup back and poured it down his throat in one smooth series of gulps. “Actually not bad at all. Tastes minty, very refreshing.”

“A worthy epitaph,” said Jean, taking the cup.

Locke stared out the window a while longer; the mesh was up, as the Duke’s Wind was still blowing in strongly from the sea and the insects weren’t yet biting. Across the Via Camorrazza the Arsenal District was mostly silent and motionless. With the Iron Sea city-states at relative peace, all the great saw-yards and warehouses and wet docks had little business. In a time of need they could build or service two dozen ships at once; now Locke could see only one skeletal hull rising within the yards.

Beyond that, the sea broke white against the base of the South Needle, an Elderglass-mortared stone breakwater nearly three-quarters of a mile in length. At its southernmost tip, a human-built watchtower stood out against the darkening sea; beyond that, the white blurs of sails could be seen beneath the red tendrils of clouds in the sky.

“Oh,” he said, “I do believe something’s happening.”

“Take a seat,” said Jean. “You’re supposed to get wobbly in just a bit.”

“Already happening. In fact … gods, I think I’m going to …”

So it began; a great wave of nausea bubbled up in Locke’s throat, and with it came everything he’d eaten for the past day. For a few long minutes he crouched on his knees, clutching a wooden bucket as devoutly as any man had ever prayed over an altar for intercession from the gods.

“Jean,” he gasped out during a brief lull between spasms of retching, “next time I conceive a plan like this, consider planting a hatchet in my skull.”

“Hardly efficacious.” Jean swapped a full bucket for an empty one and gave Locke a friendly pat on the back. “Dulling my nice sharp blades on a skull as thick as yours …”

One by one, Jean shuttered the windows. Falselight was just rising outside. “Ghastly as it is,” he said, “we need the smell to make an impression when Anjais shows up.”

Even once Locke’s stomach was thoroughly emptied, the dry heaving continued. He shuddered and shook and moaned, clutching at his guts. Jean hauled him bodily over to a sleeping pallet, where he looked down in genuine worry. “You’re pale and clammy,” he muttered. “Not bad at all. Very realistic.”

“Pretty, isn’t it? Gods,” whispered Locke, “how much longer?”

“Can’t rightly say,” said Jean. “They should be arriving down there right about now; give them a few minutes to get impatient with waiting around for us and come storming up here.”

During those few minutes, Locke became intimately acquainted with the idea of “a short eternity.” Finally, there came the creak of footsteps on the stairs, and a loud banging on the door.

“Lamora!” Anjais Barsavi’s voice. “Tannen! Open up or I’ll kick the damn door in!”

“Thank the gods,” croaked Locke as Jean rose to unbolt the door.

“We’ve been waiting out front of the Last Mistake! Are you coming or … Gods, what the hell happened in here?”

Anjais threw one arm up over his face as he stepped into the apartment and the smell of sickness. Jean pointed to Locke, writhing on the bed, moaning, half wrapped in a thin blanket despite the moist heat of the evening.

“He took ill just half an hour ago, maybe,” said Jean. “Losing his stomach all over the damn place. I don’t know what’s the matter.”

“Gods, he’s turning green.” Anjais took a few steps closer to Locke, staring in horrified sympathy. He was dressed for a fight, with a boiled leather cuirass, an unbuckled leather collar, and a pair of studded leather bracers tied over his hamlike forearms. Several men had accompanied him up the stairs, but none of them seemed in any hurry to follow him into the rooms.

“I had capon for lunch,” said Jean, “and he had fish rolls. That’s the last thing either of us ate, and I’m fine.”

“Iono’s piss. Fish rolls. Fresher than he bargained for, I’d wager.”