Scott Lynch
Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent. Part 2
7.
“I’m staring down four glasses of the serpent for YOU!” Mazoc Szaba whirled theatrically for the tolerably piqued crowd. “Those of you about to make money with me, that is! Those who bet against me, well, lick my nethermost crack at your convenience. Measure! Here’s my stake. Harvest the wagers and fill my glass!”
Locke’s coin, transmuted to Szaba’s moments earlier, rose toward the Measure’s alcove on Szaba’s outstretched palm. It was never to complete the journey.
“Why, Mazoc Szaba. To find you here of all places.”
Locke knew the voice and looked in surprise at the street door. Anjais Barsavi held that door open. He was a stout and centered plug of a man, much like his father, the Capa of Camorr.
Anjais moved forward, peering at Szaba over the tops of the sweated optics perched on his nose, and the silenced crowd parted for him as though repelled by sorcery. Behind him came a band of grim men and women with lines of ash painted across their cheeks. Grave Walkers, a gang in close Barsavi service, like the Red Hands. There were certain people the Capa might use for gentle errands. Grave Walkers were the other sort.
“Sir,” stammered Mazoc Szaba, “I don’t—”
“You know Ferrant One-Eye belongs to me.” Anjais was not a particularly forceful speaker but the circumstance of his parentage had given him a great deal of practice at talking over people. “So you can deduce who Ferrant complains to when one of her markers doesn’t appear on calling day. Not a shred of the principal. Not a taste of the lender’s sauce. And you neither at the counting-house fetching my money nor on the street earning it. Now you know why I’ve come. But what are you doing here, Szaba?”
“I’m… I’m to drink the serpent, if you’d care to watch.”
“Watch a man who owes me money drink poison instead? Never knew you had such a sense of humor. What were you proposing to stake your bet with?”
Szaba, shaking, dumbly showed the row of coins in his hand like a small child called to account before a tutor.
“My money, you mean?” Barsavi swept the eight solons from Szaba’s palm, and Szaba took this like a mouse for the same reason Locke, biting the insides of his cheeks, had to take it like a mouse. There were three thousand Right People in Camorr, and Anjais Barsavi could point them all at a single human life the way an ordinary person could send a puff of breath over a candle’s wick.
“Measure, I apologize for this interruption, but Mazoc Szaba is in no condition to drink serpent wine. His stomach is troubling him,” continued Barsavi. He was fast with a body blow and his technique was schooled; in an instant Szaba was folded up around his fist, then sinking to the floor.
“Yes, his digestion is too delicate for this amusement tonight.” As Szaba hit the floor, Anjais slammed a boot into his midsection, then did it again, and again. “Those who turn a blind eye to their debts in Camorr often develop this condition.”
Anjais knelt and patted the speechless, gasping old mercenary on his head with mock tenderness. “Does it register, you degenerate cozener? Get your balance owed to Ferrant and ensure I never have to hear about you taking a walk on one of my lenders again. If your stomach condition recurs, I assure you it will prove fatal.”
Paying no heed to the crowd that was equally disinclined to attract his attention, Anjais turned to leave and only then noticed Locke staring at him from behind the counter. “Why, it’s Lamora, isn’t it? Nazca’s little friend from the Bastards. Out on a placement, are you?”
Locke nodded, certain his eyes were bulging and his cheeks were burning bright enough to raise questions, but Anjais seemed to take for granted that this awkward mess was the natural state of his face. Smiling, he flipped a single, thin copper to Locke.
“Compliments to your garrista. The more trades you have a taste of, the less likely you are to end up with stomach trouble.”
Followed by his Grave Walkers, he went out the door with most of the proceeds of Locke’s summer in his pocket.
As the door swung shut once more, Mazoc Szaba cursed in what sounded like Vadran. Then he threw up.
“Get the mop bucket and fucking hop to it,” grumbled Botari, who had miraculously reappeared the instant Anjais Barsavi was gone.
8.
Szaba was, in a way, lucky to have been interrupted before any wagers had gone in, for this limited the number of willing hands that ejected him out the back moments later, and meant it wasn’t worth the bother of sticking a knife into him during his passage.
Locke seethed. Nobody had seemed to notice him providing Szaba’s stake, so that at least was a ribbing he wouldn’t have to endure. But the money! That magnanimous copper from Anjais made him whole for precisely one part back from forty-eight.
Chains hadn’t needed to explain why Locke was expected to scrabble together a purse from this drudgery; as a Gentleman Bastard, his activities paid into the sum that was kicked up to the Capa each week, and the mere fact that he was over here for a few months wouldn’t take his portion off his shoulders. What truly vexed him that night, going round and round in his head as he wiped counters and filled cups and mopped up after people who seemed to like spilling as much as they liked swallowing, was the question of using his skills to get back what he’d lost.
There were a hundred ways, using all the schemes and guiles Chains had taught him, to pull eight solons from fools in half a day. Though perhaps that was a frustrated exaggeration — a couple dozen, perhaps. Well, seven or eight, maybe. But they were seven or eight smooth-practiced schemes that weren’t merely waiting for Botari to set coins in his hand with all the speed and willingness of a mule doing geometry problems. Yet Chains had specifically forbidden him from using those arts.
The night went on. Locke wiped and poured and carried. His own damn fault, this was, for loving the old man enough to obey him even when it meant toil. Tending a conscience was a form of toil, he supposed. He’d tended it for the years it had taken to pay off the careless deaths represented by the shark’s tooth tucked into the little pouch he wore on a cord beneath his tunic. It felt good to brood on such thoughts as he worked. Locke had deep feelings about nearly everything but had not yet aged into the realization that brooding was just about his only means of interacting with those feelings.
The moons were high and lighting his way with soft silver-blue by the time he carried the last of the night’s dross into the alley. A fresh corpse sprawled there, not Szaba’s. Nor was there anything of value on the man’s body. Locke sighed, hunched with weariness, and went back inside to find Cyril and Vilius.
9.
“But where do we go, hmm? And what do we ask for? For good young lads of, ah, negotiable affection? Can you at least be that much of a friend?”
The three men at the counter were sturdy, bearded, red-faced. Merchants of some sort not from Camorr proper, but up or down the coast. Locke knew the type. Their notions of prosperity armored them in smugness. They were after a little thrill in the wrong parts of the big city, having no idea of the scope or shape of Right People operations, and no idea how easy it was for someone to make a red breakfast for sharks and never be missed. It was two nights after Mazoc Szaba’s humiliation.
“To be a friend,” said Locke, “I’d tell you to get smartly out of here, and go west by north, back to where there’s more Yellowjackets on the streets. Back to the sort of inn or tavern you’d want for your own sort of business. Ask around there, keep your voices down. Folk will know how to direct you. Say you’re looking for miners.”