“So I said, ‘Why don’t you step up and grab the filthy little bastard, Eymon? If he really can kill with a touch, well, you’ll go quick and easy. And if he can’t…’” Barsavi grinned, his red cheeks wrinkling grotesquely.
“Well, then.”
“A thousand full crowns,” said Eymon, giggling.
“For starters,” added Barsavi. “A promise I intend to keep. A promise I intend to expand. I told Eymon he’d die in his own villa, with gems and silks and half a dozen ladies of his choice from the Guilded Lilies to keep him company. I will invent pleasures for him. He’ll die like a fucking duke, because tonight I name him the bravest man in Camorr.”
There was a general roar of approval; men and women applauded, and fists banged on armor and shields.
“Quite the opposite,” Barsavi whispered, “of a sneaking, cowardly piece of shit who would murder my only daughter. Who wouldn’t even do it with his own hands. Who’d let some fucking hireling work a twisted magic on her. A poisoner.” Barsavi spat in Locke’s face; the warm spittle trickled down his cheek. “Your man told me, of course, that your Bondsmage had set his spell and left your service last night; that you were so very confident, you didn’t want to keep paying him. Well, I for one applaud your sense of economy.”
Barsavi gestured to Anjais and Pachero; grim-faced, the two men stepped forward. They slipped their optics off and put them in vest pockets; an ominous gesture conducted in unconscious unison. Locke opened his mouth to say something-and then the realization of exactly how sewn up he was struck him cold.
He could proclaim his true identity, have the capa tear off his false moustache and rub away the wrinkles, spill the entire story-but what would it gain him? He would never be believed. He’d already displayed a Bondsmage’s protection. If he confessed to being Locke Lamora, the hundred men and women here would be after Jean and Bug and the Sanzas next.
If he was going to save them, he had to play the Gray King until the capa was finished with him, and then he would pray for a quick and easy death. Let Locke Lamora just vanish one night; let his friends slip away to whatever better fate awaited them. Blinking back hot tears, he summoned up a grin, looked at the two Barsavi sons, and said, “By all means, you fucking curs, let’s see if you can do any better than your father.”
Anjais and Pachero knew how to strike a man with the intent to kill, but just now they had no such intent. They bruised his ribs, knuckle-punched his arms, kicked his thighs, slapped his head from side to side, and punched him in the neck until every breath was a chore. At last, Anjais had him hoisted back up, and took hold of his chin so that the two of them were looking eye to eye.
“By the way,” said Anjais, “this is from Locke Lamora.”
Anjais balanced Locke’s chin on one finger and walloped him with his other hand. White-hot pain shot through Locke’s neck, and in the red-tinted darkness around him he saw stars. He spat blood, coughed, and licked his sore, swollen lips.
“Now,” said Barsavi, “I’ll have a father’s justice for Nazca’s death.”
He clapped his hands three times.
Behind him, there was an audible noise of men cursing, and heavy footfalls banging against the stone steps. Through the door came eight more men, carrying a large wooden cask-a cask the size of the one Nazca Barsavi had been returned to her father in. The funeral cask. The crowd around Barsavi and his sons parted eagerly to let the cask haulers through. They set it on the ground beside the capa, and inside it Locke heard the slosh of liquid.
Oh, thirteen gods, he thought.
“Can’t be cut, can’t be pierced,” said the capa, as though he were musing out loud. “But you can certainly be bruised. And you certainly need to breathe.”
Two of the capa’s men popped the lid on the cask open, and Locke was dragged over to it. The eye-watering stench of horse urine spilled out into the air, and he gagged, sobbing.
“Look at the Gray King cry,” whispered Barsavi. “Look at the Gray King sob. A sight I will treasure to the last hour of my dying day!” His voice rose. “Did Nazca sob? Did my daughter cry, as you gave her her death? Somehow I don’t think so.”
The capa was shouting now. “Take a last look! He gets what Nazca got; he dies as she died, but by my hand!”
Barsavi seized Locke by the hair and tilted his face toward the barrel; for one brief irrational moment, Locke was grateful that there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. The dry retching still brought spasms of pain to his much-abused stomach muscles.
“With one small touch,” said the capa, actually gulping back sobs of exhilaration. “With one small touch, you son of a bitch. No poison for you. No quick way out before I put you in. You get to taste it, the whole time. All the while as you drown in it.”
And then he hefted Locke by the mantle, grunting. His men joined in, and together they hoisted him up over the rim, and then down he plunged face-first, down into thick, lukewarm filth that blotted out the noise of the world around him, down into darkness that burned his eyes and his cuts and swallowed him whole.
5
BARSAVI’S MEN slammed the lid back onto the barrel; several of them hammered it down with mallets and axe-butts until it was cinched tight. The capa gave the top of the barrel a thump with his fist and smiled broadly. Tears were still running down his cheeks.
“Somehow I don’t think the poor fucker did as well as he hoped with our negotiations!”
The men and women around him whooped and hollered, arms in the air, torches waving and casting wild shadows on the walls.
“Take this bastard and send him out to sea,” said the capa, gesturing toward the waterfall.
A dozen pairs of eager hands grabbed at the barrel. Laughing and joking, a crowd of the capa’s people hoisted it and carried it over to the northwestern corner of the Echo Hole, where water poured in from the ceiling and vanished into blackness through a fissure about eight feet wide. “One,” said the leader, “two…” And on the cusp of “three,” they flung the barrel down into darkness. It struck water somewhere beneath them with a splash; then they threw up their arms and began cheering once again.
“Tonight,” cried Barsavi, “Duke Nicovante sleeps safe in his bed, locked away in his glass tower! Tonight the Gray King sleeps in piss, in a tomb that I have made for him! Tonight is my night! Who rules Camorr?”
“Barsavi!” came the response from every throat in the Echo Hole, reverberating around the alien-set stones of the structure, and the capa was surrounded by a sea of noise, laughter, applause.
“Tonight,” he yelled, “send messengers to every corner of my domains! Send runners to the Last Mistake! Send runners to Catchfire! Wake the Cauldron and the Narrows and the Dregs and all the Snare! Tonight, I throw open my doors! The Right People of Camorr will come to the Floating Grave as my guests! Tonight, we’ll have such a revel that the honest folk will bar their doors, that the yellowjackets will cringe in their barracks, that the gods themselves will look down and cry, ‘What is that fucking racket?’”
“Barsavi! Barsavi! Barsavi!” his people chanted.