Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

To his surprise, that creak returned a few minutes later, growing steadily louder. Jean threw the door open, face grim, and marched directly over to Locke with a tall wooden bucket of water in his hands. Without warning, he threw this all over Locke, who gasped in surprise and fell backwards against the wall again. He shook his head like a dog and pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes.

‘Jean, are you out of your fucking—’

‘You needed a bath,’ Jean interrupted. ‘You were covered in self-pity.’

He threw the bucket down and moved around the room, plucking up any bottle or wineskin that still contained liquid. He was finished before Locke realized what he was doing; he then swiped Locke’s coin-purse from the room’s little table and tossed a thin leather package down in its place.

‘Hey, Jean, Jean, you can’t . . . that’s mine!’

‘Used to be “ours”,’ said Jean coldly. ‘I liked that better.’

When Locke tried to jump up from the bed again, Jean pushed him back down effortlessly. He then stormed out once more and pulled the door shut behind him. There was a curious clicking noise, and then nothing - not even a creak of floorboards. Jean was waiting right outside the door.

Snarling, Locke moved across the room and tried to pull the door open, but it held fast in its frame. He frowned in puzzlement and rattled it a few more times. The bolt was on his side, and it wasn’t shot.

‘It’s a curious fact,’ Jean said through the door, ‘that the rooms of the Silver Lantern can be locked from the outside with a special key only the innkeeper has. In case he wants to keep an unruly guest at bay while he calls for the watch, you see.’

‘Jean, open this fucking door!’

‘No. You open it.’

‘I can’t! You told me yourself you’ve got the special key!’

‘The Locke Lamora I used to know would spit on you,’ said Jean. ‘Priest of the Crooked Warden. Garrista of the Gentlemen Bastards. Student of Father Chains. Brother to Calo, Galdo and Bug! Tell me, what would Sabetha think of you?’

‘You . . . you bastard! Open this door!’

‘Look at yourself, Locke. You’re a fucking disgrace. Open it yourself.’

‘You. Have. The. Godsdamnedmotherfuckingkey.’

‘You know how to charm a lock, right? I left you some picks on the table. You want your wine back, you work the bloody door yourself.’

‘You son of a bitch!’

‘My mother was a saint,’ said Jean. ‘The sweetest jewel Camorr ever produced. The city didn’t deserve her. I can wait out here all night, you know. It’ll be easy. I’ve got all your wine and all your money.’

‘Gaaaaaaaaaaah!’

Locke snatched the little leather wallet off the table; he wiggled the fingers of his good right hand and regarded his left hand more dubiously; the broken wrist was mending, but it ached constantly.

He bent over the lock mechanism by the door, scowled and went to work. He was surprised at how quickly the muscles of his back began to protest his uncomfortable posture. He stopped long enough to pull the room’s chair over so he could sit on it while he worked.

As his picks rattled around inside the lock and he bit his tongue in concentration, he heard the heavy creak of movement outside the door and a series of loud thumps.

‘Jean?’

‘Still here, Locke,’ came Jean’s voice, now cheerful. ‘Gods, you’re taking your sweet time. Oh, I’m sorry - have you even started yet?’

‘When I get this door open, you’re dead, Jean!’

‘When you get that door open? I look forward to many long years of life, then.’

Locke redoubled his concentration, falling back into the rhythm he’d learned over so many painstaking hours as a boy - moving the picks slightly, feeling for sensations. That damn creaking and thumping had started up on the other side of the door again! What was Jean playing at now? Locke closed his eyes and tried to block the sound out of his mind . . . tried to let his world narrow down to the message of the picks against his fingers . . .

The mechanism clicked open. Locke stumbled up from his chair, jubilant and furious, and yanked the door open.

Jean had vanished, and the narrow corridor outside the room was packed wall to wall with wooden crates and barrels - an impassable barrier about three feet from Locke’s face.

‘Jean, what the hell is this?’

‘I’m sorry, Locke.’ Jean was obviously standing directly behind his makeshift wall. ‘I borrowed a few things from the keeper’s larder and got a few of the boys you cheated at cards last week to help me carry it all up here.’

Locke gave the wall a good shove, but it didn’t budge; Jean was probably putting his full weight against it. There was a faint chorus of laughter from somewhere on the other side, probably down in the common room. Locke ground his teeth together and beat the flat of his good hand against a barrel.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Jean? You’re making a gods-damned scene!’

‘Not really. Last week I told the keeper you were a Camorri don travelling incognito, trying to recover from a bout of madness. Just now I set an awful lot of silver on his bar. You do remember silver, don’t you? How we used to steal it from people, back when you were pleasant company?’

‘This has ceased to amuse me, Jean! Give me back my gods-damned wine!’

‘Gods-damned it is. And I’m afraid that if you want it, you’re going to have to climb out through your window.’

Locke took a step back and stared at the makeshift wall, dumbfounded. ‘Jean, you can’t be serious.’

‘I’ve never been more serious.’

‘Go to hell. Go to hell! I can’t climb out of a bloody window. My wrist—’

‘You fought the Grey King with one arm nearly cut off. You climbed out of a window five hundred feet up in Raven’s Reach. And here you are, three storeys off the ground, helpless as a kitten in a grease barrel. Crybaby. Pissant.’

‘You are deliberately trying to provoke me!’

‘No shit,’ said Jean. ‘Sharp as a cudgel, you are.’

Locke stomped back into the room, fuming. He stared at the shuttered window, bit his tongue and stormed back to Jean’s wall.

‘Please let me out,’ he said, as evenly as he could manage. ‘Your point is driven home.’

‘I’d drive it home with a blackened-steel pike if I had one,’ said Jean. ‘Why are you talking to me when you should be climbing out of the window?’

‘Gods damn you!’

Back to the room; Locke paced furiously. He swung his arms about tentatively; the cuts on his left arm ached and the deep wound on his shoulder still twinged cruelly. His battered left wrist felt as though it might almost serve. Pain or no pain . . . he curled his left-hand fingers into a fist, stared down at them and then looked up at the window with narrowed eyes.

‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you a thing or three, you son of a bloody silk merchant...’

Locke tore his bedding apart, knotting sheet-ends to blankets, inviting twinges from his injuries. The pain only served to drive him on faster. He tightened his last knot, threw open the shutters and tossed his makeshift rope out through the window. He tied the end in his hands to his bed frame. It wasn’t a terribly sturdy piece of furniture, but then he didn’t weigh all that much.

Out through the window he went.

Vel Virazzo was an old, low city; Locke’s impressions as he swung there, three storeys above the faintly misted street, came in flashes. Flat-topped, sagging buildings of stone and plaster . . . reefed sails on black masts in the harbour . . . white moonlight gleaming on dark water

. . . red lights burning atop glass pylons, receding in a line out toward the horizon. Locke shut his eyes, clung to his sheets and bit his tongue to avoid throwing up.

It seemed easiest simply to slide downward; he did so in fits and starts, letting his palms grow warm against the sheets and blankets before stopping. Down ten feet . . . Twenty . . . He balanced precariously on the top sill of the inn’s common-room window and gasped in a few deep breaths before continuing. Warm as the night was, he was getting chilly from the soaking he’d received.

The last strip of the last sheet ended about six feet off the ground; Locke slid down as far as he could, then let himself drop. His heels slapped against the cobblestones, and he found Jean Tannen already waiting for him, with a cheap grey cloak in his hands. Before Locke could move, Jean flung the cloak around his shoulders.

‘You son of a bitch,’ cried Locke, pulling the cloak around himself with both hands. ‘You snake-souled, dirty-minded son of a bitch! I hope a shark tries to suck your cock!’

‘Why, Master Lamora, look at you,’ said Jean. ‘Charming a lock, climbing out of a window. Almost as though you used to be a thief.’

‘I was pulling off hanging offences when you were still teeth-on-tits in your mother’s arms!’

‘And I’ve been pulling off hanging offences while you’ve been sulking in your room, drinking away your skills.’

‘I’m the best thief in Vel Virazzo,’ growled Locke, ‘drunk or sober, awake or asleep, and you damn well know it.’

‘I might have believed that once,’ said Jean. ‘But that was a man I knew in Camorr, and he hasn’t been with me for some time.’

‘Gods damn your ugly face,’ yelled Locke as he stepped up to Jean and punched him in the stomach. More surprised than hurt, Jean gave him a solid shove. Locke flew backwards, cloak whirling as he tried to keep his balance - until he collided with a man who’d been coming down the street.

‘Mind your fucking step!’ The stranger, a middle-aged man in a long orange coat and the prim clothes of a clerk or a lawscribe, wrestled for a few seconds with Locke, who clutched at him for support.

‘A thousand pardons,’ said Locke, ‘A thousand pardons, sir. My friend and I were merely having a discussion; the fault is all mine.’

‘I dare say it is,’ said the stranger, at last succeeding in prying Locke from his coat lapels and thrusting him away. ‘You have breath like a wine-cask! Bloody Camorri.’

Locke watched until the man was a good twenty or thirty yards down the street, then whirled back toward Jean, dangling a little black leather purse in the air before him. It jingled with a healthy supply of heavy coins.

‘Ha! What do you say to that, hmmm?’

‘I say it was bloody child’s play. Doesn’t mean a gods-damned thing.’

‘Child’s play? Die screaming, Jean, that was—’

‘You’re mangy,’ said Jean. ‘You’re dirtier than a Shades’ Hill orphan. You’ve lost weight, though where from is a great mystery. You haven’t been exercising your wounds or letting anyone tend to them for you. You’ve been hiding in a room, letting your condition slip away, and you’ve been drunk for two straight weeks. You’re not what you were and it’s your own damn fault.’

‘So.’ Locke scowled at Jean, slipped the purse into a tunic pocket and straightened the cloak on his shoulders. ‘You require a demonstration. Fine. Get back inside and take down your silly wall, and wait for me in the room. I’ll be back in a few hours.’

‘I . . .’

But Locke had already thrown up the hood of his cloak, turned and begun to stride down the street, into the warm Vel Virazzo night.