“With pleasure,” said Jean, “but it won’t happen. They’ll only run away when they see me coming, as always. The one thing I can’t do is keep up with them on foot.”
“Just you leave that to me,” said Locke, “and fetch your sewing kit. There’s something I need you to do for me.”
4
SO IT was that Locke Lamora lurked in an alley on an overcast day, very near to the place where the whole affair with the Half-Crowns had started. The Shifting Market was doing a brisk business, as folk attempted to get their shopping done before the sky started pouring down rain. Out there somewhere, watching Locke with comfortable anonymity from a little cockleshell boat, was Jean Tannen.
Locke only had to lurk conspicuously for half an hour before Tesso found him.
“Lamora,” he said. “I thought you’d know better by now. I don’t see any of your friends in the neighborhood.”
“Tesso. Hello.” Locke yawned. “I think today’s the day you’ll be giving over your preference to me.”
“In a pig’s fucking eye,” said the older boy. “You know I don’t even need help to knock you flat. What I think I’m going to do is take your clothes when I’m done and throw them in a canal. That’ll be right humorous. Hell, the longer you put off bending the knee, the more fun I can have with you.”
He advanced confidently to the attack, knowing that Locke had never once so much as kept up with him in a fight. Locke met him head-on, shaking the left sleeve of his coat strangely. That sleeve was actually five feet longer than usual, courtesy of Jean Tannen’s alterations; Locke had kept it cleverly folded against his side to conceal its true nature as Tesso approached.
Although Locke had few gifts as a fighter, he could be startlingly fast, and the cuff of his sleeve had a small lead weight sewn into it to aid him in casting it. He flung it forth, wrapping it around Tesso’s chest beneath the taller boy’s arms. The lead weight carried it around as it stretched taut, and Locke caught it in his left hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tesso huffed. He clouted Locke just above his right eye; Locke flinched but ignored the pain. He slipped the extended sleeve into a loop of cloth that hung out of his coat’s left pocket, folded it back over itself, and pulled another cord just below it. The network of knotted cords that Jean had sewn inside his coat’s lining cinched tight; now the boys were chest to chest, and nothing short of a knife could free Tesso from the loop of thick cloth that tied them together.
Locke wrapped his arms around Tesso’s abdomen for good measure, and then wrapped his spindly legs around Tesso’s legs, just above the taller boy’s knees. Tesso shoved and slapped at Locke, struggling to part the two of them. Failing, he began punching Locke in the teeth and on the top of his head-heavy blows that left Locke seeing flashes of light.
“What the hell is this, Lamora?” Tesso grunted with the effort of supporting Locke’s weight in addition to his own. Finally, as Locke had hoped and expected, he threw himself forward. Locke landed on his back in the gravel, with Tesso atop him. The air burst out of Locke’s lungs, and the whole world seemed to shudder. “This is ridiculous. You can’t fight me. And now you can’t run! Give up, Lamora!”
Locke spit blood into Tesso’s face. “I don’t have to fight you and I don’t have to run.” He grinned wildly. “I just have to keep you here…until Jean gets back.”
Tesso gasped and looked around. Out, on the Shifting Market one small cockleshell boat was heading straight toward them. The plump shape of Jean Tannen was clearly visible within it, hauling rapidly on the oars.
“Oh, shit. You little bastard. Let me go, let me go, let me go!”
Tesso punctuated this with a series of punches. Soon enough Locke was bleeding from his nose, his lips, his ears, and somewhere under his hair. Tesso was pounding him but good, yet he continued to cling madly to the older boy. His head was whirling with the combination of pain and triumph; Locke actually started laughing, high and gleeful and perhaps a little bit mad.
“I don’t have to fight or run,” he cackled. “I changed the rules of the game. I just have to keep you here…asshole. Here…until…Jean gets back.”
“Gods dammit,” Tesso hissed, and he redoubled his assault on Locke, punching and spitting and biting.
“Keep hitting,” Locke sputtered. “You just keep hitting. I can take it all day. You just keep…hitting me…until…Jean gets back!”
III. REVELATION
“Nature never deceives us;
it is always we who deceive ourselves.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
From Émile ou De l’éducation
CHAPTER NINE. A CURIOUS TALE FOR COUNTESS AMBERGLASS
1
AT HALF PAST the tenth hour of the evening on Duke’s Day, as low dark clouds fell in above Camorr, blotting out the stars and the moons, Doña Sofia Salvara was being hoisted up into the sky to have a late tea with Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza, dowager countess of Amberglass, at the top of the great lady’s Elderglass tower.
The passenger cage rattled and swayed, and Sofia clung to the black iron bars for support. The sweaty Hangman’s Wing fluttered at her hooded coat as she stared south. All of the city lay spread beneath her, black and gray from horizon to horizon, suffused with the glow of fire and alchemy. This was a point of quiet pride for her every time she had the chance to take in this view from one of the Five Towers. The Eldren had built glass wonders for men to claim; engineers had crafted buildings of stone and wood in the Eldren ruins to make the cities their own; Bondsmagi pretended to the powers the Eldren must have once held. But it was alchemy that drove back the darkness every evening; alchemy that lit the commonest home and the tallest tower alike, cleaner and safer than natural fire. It was her art that tamed the night.
At last, her long ascent ended; the cage rattled to a halt beside an embarkation platform four-fifths of the way up Amberglass’ full height. The wind sighed mournfully in the strange fluted arches at the peak of the tower. Two footmen in cream-white waistcoats and immaculate white gloves and breeches helped her out of the cage, as they might have assisted her from a carriage down on the ground. Once she was safely on the platform, the two men bowed from the waist.
“M’lady Salvara,” said the one on the left, “my mistress bids you welcome to Amberglass.”
“Most kind,” said Doña Sofia.
“If it would please you to wait on the terrace, she will join you momentarily.”
The same footman led the way past a half dozen servants in similar livery, who stood panting beside the elaborate arrangement of gears, levers, and chains they worked to haul the cargo cage up and down. They, too, bowed as she passed; she favored them with a smile and an acknowledging wave. It never hurt to be pleasant to the servants in charge of that particular operation.
Doña Vorchenza’s terrace was a wide crescent of transparent Elderglass jutting out from the north face of her tower, surrounded by brass safety rails. Doña Sofia looked straight down, as she had always been warned not to do, and as she always did. It seemed that she and the footman walked on thin air forty stories above the stone courtyards and storage buildings at the base of the tower; alchemical lamps were specks of light, and carriages were black squares smaller than one of her nails.