Locke’s red-cheeked silence was an answer in itself. Suddenly unable to look Father Chains in the eyes, he tried to pretend that his feet were fascinating objects that he’d never seen before.
“Locke, Locke, we can’t all be mad dogs with a blade in our hands, and it’s nothing to sob about, so let’s not see that lip of yours quivering like an old whore’s tits, right? You will learn steel, and you’ll learn rope, and you’ll learn the alley-piece. But you’ll learn them sneak-style. In the back, from the side, from above, in the dark.” Chains grabbed an imaginary opponent from behind, left hand round the throat, right hand thrusting at kidney-level with his half-smoked sheaf for a dagger. “All the twists, because fighting wisely will keep you from getting cut to mince.”
Chains pretended to wipe the blood from his ember-tipped “blade,” then took another drag. “That’s that. Put it in your hat and wear it to town, Locke. We need to face our shortcomings head-on. The old saying for a gang is ‘Lies go out, but the truth stays home.’” He forced twin streams of smoke from his nostrils, and cheered up visibly as the tails of gray vapor swirled around his head. “Now quit acting like there’s a fucking naked woman on your shoes, will you?”
Locke did grin at that, weakly, but he also looked up and nodded.
“Now, you,” Chains said, turning to regard Jean. “We all know you’ve got the sort of temper that cracks skulls when it’s off the leash. We’ve got a properly evil brain in Locke here, a fantastic liar. Calo and Galdo are silver at all trades and gold at none. Sabetha’s the born queen of all the charmers that ever lived. But what we don’t have yet is a plain old bruiser. I think it could be you, a stand-up brawler to keep your friends out of trouble. A real rabid-dog bastard with steel in your hand. Care to give it a go?”
Jean’s eyes were immediately drawn down to the fascinating spectacle of his own feet. “Um, well, if you think that would be good, I can try…”
“Jean, I’ve seen you angry.”
“I’ve felt you angry,” said Locke, grinning.
“And give me some credit for being five times your fucking age, Jean. You don’t smolder and you don’t make threats; you just go cold, and then you make things happen. Some folks are made for hard situations.” He drew smoke from his sheaf once again, and flicked white ashes to the stones beneath his feet. “I think you have the knack for smacking brains out of heads. That’s neither good nor bad in itself, but it’s something we can use.”
Jean seemed to think this over for a few moments, but Locke and Chains could both see the decision already made in his eyes. They had gone hard and hungry under his black tangle of hair, and his nod was just a formality.
“Good, good! Thought you’d like the idea, so I took the liberty of making arrangements.” He produced a black leather wallet from one of the pockets of his coat and handed it over to Jean. “Half past noon tomorrow, you’re expected at the House of Glass Roses.”
Locke and Jean both widened their eyes at the mention of Camorr’s best-known and most exclusive school of arms. Jean flipped the sigil-wallet open. Inside was a flat token, a stylized rose in frosted glass, fused directly onto the inner surface of the leather. With this, Jean could pass north over the Angevine and past the guardposts to the Alcegrante islands. It placed him under the direct protection of Don Tomsa Maranzalla, Master of the House of Glass Roses.
“That rose will get you over the river and up among the swells, but don’t fuck around once you’re up there. Do what you’re told; go straight there and come straight back. You go four times a week from now on. And for all our sakes, tame that mess on top of your head. Use fire and a poleaxe if you have to.” Chains took a final drag of evergreen-scented smoke from his rapidly disappearing sheaf, then flicked the butt up and over the roof wall. His last exhalation of the night sailed over the heads of the two boys, a wobbly but otherwise fully formed ring.
“Fuck me! An omen.” Chains reached after the drifting ring as though he could pluck it back for examination. “Either this scheme is fated to work out, or the gods are pleased with me for engineering your demise, Jean Tannen. I love a win-win proposition. Now don’t you two have work to do?”
2
IN THE House of Glass Roses, there was a hungry garden.
The place was Camorr in microcosm; a thing of the Eldren, left behind for men to puzzle over-a dangerous treasure discarded like a toy. The Elderglass that mortared its stones rendered it proof against all human arts, much like the Five Towers and a dozen other structures scattered over the islands of the city. The men and women who lived in these places were squatters in glory, and the House of Glass Roses was the most glorious, dangerous place on the Alcegrante slopes. That Don Maranzalla held it was a sign of his high and lasting favor with the duke.
Just before the midpoint of the noon hour the next day, Jean Tannen stood at the door of Don Maranzalla’s tower: five cylindrical stories of gray stone and silver glass, a hulking fastness that made the lovely villas around it look like an architect’s scale models. Great waves of white heat beat down from the cloudless sky, and the air was heavy with the slightly beery breath of a city river boiling under long hours of sun. A frosted glass window was set into the stone beside the tower’s huge lacquered oaken doors, behind which the vague outline of a face could be discerned. Jean’s approach had been noted.
He’d gone north over the Angevine on a glass catbridge no wider than his hips, clinging to the guide ropes with sweaty hands for all six hundred feet of the crossing. There were no large bridges to the south bank of the Isla Zantara, second most easterly of the Alcegrante isles. Ferry rides were a copper half-baron. For those too poor to ride, that left the ecstatic terror of the catbridges. Jean had never been aloft on one before, and the sight of more experienced men and women ignoring the ropes as they crossed at speed had turned his bowels to ice water. The feel of hard pavement beneath his shoes had been a blessed relief when it came again.
The sweat-soaked yellowjackets on duty at the Isla Zantara gatehouse had let Jean pass far more quickly than he’d thought possible, and he’d seen the mirth drain from their ruddy faces the moment they recognized the sigil he carried. Their directions after that had been terse; was it pity that tinged their voices, or fear?
“We’ll look for you, boy,” one of them suddenly called after him as he started up the clean white stones of the street, “if you come back down the hill again!”
Mingled pity and fear, then. Had Jean really been enthusiastic for this adventure as recently as the night before?
The creak and rattle of counterweights heralded the appearance of a dark crack between the twin doors before him. A second later, the portals swung wide with slow majesty, muscled outward by a pair of men in bloodred waistcoats and sashes, and Jean saw that each door was half a foot of solid wood backed with iron bands. A wave of scents washed out over him: humid stone and old sweat, roasting meat and cinnamon incense. Smells of prosperity and security, of life within walls.
Jean held his wallet up to the men who’d opened the door, and one of them waved a hand impatiently. “You’re expected. Enter as a guest of Don Maranzalla and respect his house as you would your own.”
Against the left-hand wall of the opulent foyer, a pair of curlicue staircases in black iron wound upward; Jean followed the man around and up one set of narrow steps, self-consciously trying to keep his sweating and gasping under control. The tower doors were pulled shut beneath them with an echoing slam.