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

‘You drank from the same bottle,’ said Locke, still standing.

‘Of course I did. It wasn’t actually in the cider. It was in your goblets, painted into the bottoms. Colourless and tasteless. A proprietary alchemical substance, quite expensive. You should be flattered. I’ve increased your net personal worth, heh.’

‘I know a thing or two about poisons. What is it?’

‘What would be the sense in telling you anything more? You might attempt to have someone assemble an antidote. As it stands, your only possible source for your antidote is me.’ He smiled, every pretence of contrite gentility shed from his features like a moulted insect’s husk. A very different Stragos was with them now, and there was a lash in his voice. ‘Sit down. You’re at my disposal now, obviously. You’re not what I might have wanted, by the gods, but perhaps just what I can best put to use.’

Locke and Jean settled back into their chairs, uneasily. Locke threw his goblet down onto the carpet, where it bounced and rolled to a halt beside Stragos’s table.

‘You might as well know,’ said Locke, ‘that I’ve been poisoned for coercive purposes before.’

‘Have you? How convenient. Then surely you’ll agree it’s better than being poisoned for murderous ones.’

‘What would you have us do?’

‘Something useful,’ said Stragos, ‘Something grand. According to this report, you’re the Thorn of Camorr. My agents brought me stories of you . . . the most ridiculous rumours, which now turn out to have been true. I thought you were a myth.’

‘The Thorn of Camorr is a myth,’ said Locke. ‘And it was never just me. We’ve always worked as a group, as a team.’

‘Of course. No need to stress Master Tannen’s importance to me. It’s all here, in this file. I shall keep you both alive while I prepare for the task I have in mind for you. I’m not ready to discuss it yet, so let us say that I’m keeping you on retainer in the mean time. Go about your business. When I call, you will come.’

‘Will we?’ spat Locke.

‘Oh, it’s well within your power to leave the city - and if you do, you will both die rather slow and miserable deaths before another season passes. And that would disappoint us all.’

‘You could be bluffing,’ said Jean.

‘Yes, yes, but if you’re rational men, a bluff would hold you as surely as a real poison, would it not? But come now, Tannen. I have the resources not to bluff.’

‘And what’s to keep us from running after we’ve received the antidote? ’

‘The poison is latent, Lamora. It slumbers within the body for many, many months, if not years. I will dole out your antidote at intervals so long as you please me.’

‘And what guarantee do we have that you’ll continue to give us the antidote once we’ve done whatever task you’d set us to?’

‘You have none.’

‘And no better alternatives.’

‘Of course not.’

Locke closed his eyes and gently massaged them with the knuckles of his index fingers. ‘Your alleged poison. Will it interfere with our daily lives in any way? Will it complicate matters of judgment, agility or health?’

‘Not at all,’ said Stragos. ‘You won’t notice a thing until the time for the antidote is well past, and then you’ll notice a great deal all at once. Until then, your affairs will be unimpeded.’

‘But you have already impeded our affairs,’ said Jean. ‘We’re at a very delicate point in our dealings with Requin.’

‘He gave us strict orders,’ said Locke, ‘to do nothing suspicious while he sniffs around our recent activities. Disappearing from the streets in the care of the Archon’s people would probably qualify as suspicious.’

‘Already taken into consideration,’ said the Archon. ‘Most of the people who pulled you two off the street are in one of Requin’s gangs. He just doesn’t know they work for me. They’ll report seeing you out and about, even if others do not.’

‘Are you confident that Requin is blind to their true loyalty?’

‘Gods bless your amusing insolence, Lamora, but I’m not going to justify my every order to you. You’ll accept them like my other soldiers, and if you must trust, trust in the judgement that has kept me seated as Archon for fifteen years.’

‘It’s our lives under Requin’s thumb if you’re wrong, Stragos.’

‘It’s your lives under my thumb, regardless.’

‘Requin is no fool!’

‘Then why are you attempting to steal from him?’

‘We flatter ourselves,’ said Jean, ‘that we’re—’

‘I’ll tell you why,’ Stragos interrupted. He closed his file and folded his hands atop it. ‘You’re not just greedy. You two have an unhealthy lust for excitement. The contemplation of long odds must positively get you drunk. Or else why choose the life you have, when you could obviously have succeeded as thieves of a more mundane stripe, within the limits allowed by that Barsavi?’

‘If you think that little pile of papers gives you enough knowledge to presume so much—’

‘You two are risk-takers. Exceptional, professional risk-takers. I have just the risk for you to take. You might even enjoy it.’

‘That might have been true,’ said Locke, ‘before you told us about the cider.’

‘Obviously I know that what I’ve done will give you cause to bear me malice. Appreciate my position. I’ve done this to you because I respect your abilities. I can’t afford to have you in my service without controls. You’re a lever and a fulcrum, you two, looking for a city to turn upside-down.’

‘Why the hell couldn’t you just hire us?’

‘How would money be sufficient leverage for two men who can conjure it as easily as you?’

‘So the fact that you’re screwing us like a Jeremite cot doxy is really a very sweet compliment?’ said Jean. ‘You fucking . . .’

‘Calm down, Tannen,’ said Stragos.

‘Why should he?’ Locke straightened his sweat-rumpled tunic and began tying his wrinkled neck-cloths back on in an agitated huff. ‘You poison us, lay a mysterious task at our feet and offer no pay. You complicate our lives as Kosta and de Ferra, and you expect to summon us at your leisure when you condescend to reveal this chore. Gods. What about expenses, should we incur them?’

‘You shall have any funds and materials you require to operate in my service. And before you get excited, remember that you’ll account for every last centira properly.’

‘Oh, splendid. And what other perquisites does this job of yours entail? Complementary luncheon at the barracks of your Eyes? Convalescent beds when Requin cuts our balls off and has them sewn into our eye sockets?’

‘I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this—’

‘Get accustomed to it,’ snapped Locke, rising from his chair and beginning to dust off his coat. ‘I have a counter-proposal, one I urge you to entertain quite seriously.’

‘Oh?’

‘Forget about this, Stragos.’ Locke drew on his coat, shook his shoulders to settle it properly and gripped it by the lapels. ‘Forget about this whole ridiculous scheme. Give us enough antidote, if there is one, to settle us for the time being. Or let us know what it is and we’ll have our own alchemist see to it, with our own funds. Send us back to Requin, for whom you profess no love, and let us get on with robbing him. Bother us no further, and we’ll return the favour.’

‘What could that possibly gain me?’

‘My point is more that it would allow you to keep everything you have now.’

‘My dear Lamora,’ laughed Stragos with a soft, dry sound like an echo inside a coffin, ‘your bluster may be sufficient to convince some sponge-spined Camorri mongrel don to hand over his coin-purse. It might even be enough to see you through the task I have in mind. But you’re mine now, and the Bondsmagi were rather clear on how you might be humbled.’

‘Oh? How’s that, then?’

‘Threaten me one more time and I shall have Jean returned to the sweltering chamber for the rest of the night. You may wait, chained outside in perfect comfort, imagining what it must be like for him. And the reverse, Jean, should you decide to wax rebellious.’

Locke clenched his jaw and looked down at his feet. Jean sighed, reached over and patted him on the arm. Locke nodded very slightly.

‘Good.’ Stragos smiled without warmth. ‘Just as I respect your abilities, I respect your loyalty to one another. I respect it enough to use it, for good and for ill. So you will want to come at my summons, and accept the task I have for you . . . it’s when I refuse to see you that you will begin to have cause for concern.’

‘So be it,’ said Locke. ‘But I want you to remember.’

‘Remember what?’

‘That I offered to let this go,’ said Locke. ‘That I offered to simply walk away.’

‘Gods, but you do think highly of yourself, don’t you, Master Lamora?’

‘Just highly enough. No higher than the Bondsmagi, I’d say.’

‘Are you suggesting that Karthain fears you, Master Lamora? Please. If that were so, they would have killed you already. No. They don’t fear you - they want to see you punished. Giving you over to me to suit my own purposes would appear to accomplish that in their eyes. I daresay you’ve good reason to bear them malice.’

‘Indeed,’ said Locke. ‘Consider for a moment,’ said Stragos, ‘the possibility that I might not like them any more than you do. And that while I might use them, out of necessity, and freely accept windfalls they send in my direction . . . your service on my behalf might actually come to work against them. Doesn’t that intrigue you?’

‘Nothing you say can be taken in good faith.’ Locke glowered.

‘Ahhh. That’s where you’re wrong, Lamora. With the benefit of time, you’ll see how little need I have to lie about anything. Now, this audience is over. Reflect on your situation, and don’t do anything rash. You may remove yourselves from the Mon Magisteria and return when summoned.’

‘Wait,’ said Locke, ‘just—’

The Archon rose, tucked the file under his arm, turned and left the room through the same door he’d used to enter. It swung shut immediately behind him with the clatter of steel mechanisms.

‘Hell,’ said Jean.

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Locke. ‘I was so keen to come to Tal fucking Verrar.’

‘It’s not your fault. We were both eager to hop in bed with the wench; it’s just shit luck she turned out to have the clap.’

The main doors to the office creaked open, revealing a dozen Eyes waiting in the hall beyond.

Locke stared at the Eyes for several seconds, then grinned and cleared his throat. ‘Oh, good. Your master has left strict instructions placing you at our disposal. We’re to have a boat, eight rowers, a hot meal, five hundred solari, six women who know how to give a proper massage and—’

One thing Locke would say for the Eyes was that when they seized him and Jean to ‘escort’ them from the Mon Magisteria, they were firm without being needlessly cruel. Their clubs remained at their belts, and there were a minimal number of body-blows to soften the resolve of their prisoners. All in all, a very efficient bunch by which to be manhandled.