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

When Locke managed to elbow his way back down to the second floor at last, the young man in the cage was limping, bleeding and wobbling on his feet. Half a dozen stiletto wasps were free in the enclosure, hovering and darting around him. Locke sighed as he pushed through the crowd.

‘Master Kosta! Returned to us just in time for the issue to be settled, I believe.’

Madam Durenna smiled over the top of her drink, some milky orange liquor in a slender glass vessel nearly a foot high. Jean was sipping from a smaller tumbler of something pale brown, and he passed an identical glass to Locke, who took it up with a grateful nod. Honeyed rum - hard enough to avoid Durenna’s scorn, but not quite powerful enough to start beating anyone’s better judgment down for the evening.

‘Is it about that time? My apologies for my absence. Silly little business.’

‘Silly? With one of the Priori involved?’

‘I made the mistake of showing him a card trick last week,’ said Locke. ‘Now he’s making arrangements for me to perform the same trick for, ah, a friend of his.’

‘It must be an impressive trick, then. More impressive than what you usually do at a card table?’

‘I doubt it, madam.’ Locke took a long sip from his drink. ‘For one thing, I don’t have to worry about such excellent opposition when I’m performing a card trick.’

‘Has anyone ever tried to cut out that disgustingly silver tongue of yours, Master Kosta?’

‘It’s become a traditional pastime in several cities I could mention.’

In the cage, the mad buzzing of the wasps grew louder as more of them exploded from their cells . . . two, three, four . . . Locke shuddered and watched helplessly as the blurry dark shapes hurtled around the meshed cage. The young man tried to stand his ground, then panicked and began to flail wildly. One wasp met his glove and was slapped to the floor, but another alighted on his lower back and drove its body down. The boy howled, slapped at it and arched his back. The crowd grew deadly silent in mingled horror and anticipation.

It was fast, but Locke would never have called it merciful. The wasps swarmed the young man, darting and stinging, digging their clawed legs into his blood-soaked shirt. One on his chest, one on his arm, its abdomen pulsing madly up and down . . . one fluttered about his hair, and another drove its sting home into the nape of his neck. The boy’s wild screams became wet choking noises. Foam trickled from his mouth, blood ran in rivulets down his face and chest, and at last he fell over, twitching wildly. The wasps buzzed and stalked atop his body, looking horribly like blood-coloured ants as they went about their business, still stinging and biting.

Locke’s stomach revolted against the small breakfast he’d eaten at the Villa Candessa, and he bit down hard on one of his curled fingers, using the pain to assert some self-control. When he turned back to Madam Durenna, his face was once again placid.

‘Well,’ she said, waving the four wooden sticks at him and Jean, ‘this is a tolerable salve for the wounds I still bear from our last meeting. But when shall we have the pleasure of full redress?’

‘It can’t possibly come soon enough,’ said Locke. ‘But if you’ll excuse us for the evening, we’ve got some . . . political difficulties to discuss. And before we leave I’m going to dispose of my drink on the body of the man who’s cost us two hundred solari.’

Madam Durenna waved airily and was reloading her silver pipe from a leather pouch before Locke and Jean had taken two steps.

Locke’s queasiness rose again as he approached the cage. The crowd was breaking up around him, trading marker sticks and enthusiastic babble. The last few paces around the cage, though, were already clear. The noise and movement in the room around them were keeping the wasps agitated. As Locke approached the cage, a pair leapt back into the air and hovered menacingly, beating loudly against the inner layer of mesh and following him along. Their black eyes seemed to stare right into his. He cringed despite himself.

He knelt as close to the young man’s body as he could get, and in seconds half the free wasps in the enclosure were buzzing and batting against the mesh just a foot or two from his face. Locke threw the remaining half of his rum on the wasp-covered corpse. Behind him, there was an eruption of laughter.

‘That’s the spirit, friend,’ came a slurred voice. ‘Clumsy son of a bitch cost me five hundred solari. Take a piss on him while you’re down there!’

‘Crooked Warden,’ Locke muttered under his breath, speaking quickly, ‘a glass poured on the ground for a stranger without friends. Lord of gallants and fools, ease this man’s passage to the Lady of the Long Silence. This was a hell of a way to die. Do this for me and I’ll try not to ask for anything for a while. I really do mean that this time.’

Locke kissed the back of his left hand and stood up. With the blessing said, suddenly he couldn’t be far enough away from the cage.

‘Where now?’ asked Jean quietly.

‘The hell away from these gods-damned insects.’