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

Six days north up the coast road from Tal Verrar, the demi-city of Salon Corbeau lies within an unusually verdant cleft in the black seaside rocks. More than a private estate, not quite a functional village, the demi-city clings to its peculiar life in the smouldering shadow of Mount Azar.

In the time of the Therin Throne Azar exploded to life, burying three living villages and ten thousand souls in a matter of minutes. These days it seems content merely to rumble and brood, sending twisting charcoal plumes out to sea, and flights of ravens wheel without concern beneath the tired old volcano’s smoke. Here begin the hot, dusty plains called the Adra Morcala, inhabited by few and loved by none. They roll like a cracked, dry sea all the way to the southern boundaries of Balinel, most westerly and desolate canton of the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows.

Locke Lamora rode into Salon Corbeau on the ninth day of Aurim, in the Seventy-Eighth Year of Nara. A mild westerly winter. A fruitful year (and more) had passed since he and Jean had first set foot in Tal Verrar, and in the armoured strongbox at the rear of Locke’s rented carriage rattled a thousand gold solari, stolen at billiards from a certain Lord Landreval of Espara who was unusually sensitive to lemons.

The little harbour that served the demi-city was thick with small craft - yachts and pleasure-barges and coasting galleys with square silk sails. Farther out, upon the open sea, a galleon and a sloop rode at anchor, each flying the pennant of Lashain under family crests and colours Locke didn’t recognize. The breeze was slight and the sun was pale, more silver than gold behind the hazy exhalations of the mountain.

‘Welcome to Salon Corbeau,’ said a footman in livery of black and olive-green, with a tall hat of pressed black felt. ‘How are you styled, and how must you be announced?’

A liveried woman placed a wooden block beneath the open door to Locke’s carriage and he stepped out, bracing his hands in the small of his back and stretching with relief before hopping to the ground. He wore a drooping black moustache beneath black-rimmed optics and slicked-black hair; his heavy black coat was tight in the chest and shoulders but flared out from waist to knees, fluttering behind him like a cape. He had eschewed the more refined hose and shoes for grey pantaloons tucked into knee-high field boots, dull black beneath a faint layer of road dust.

‘I am Mordavi Fehrwight, a merchant of Emberlain,’ he said. ‘I doubt that I shall require announcement as I have no title of any consequence.’

‘Very good, Master Fehrwight,’ said the footman smoothly. ‘The Lady Saljesca appreciates your visit to Salon Corbeau and earnestly wishes you good fortune in your affairs.’

‘Appreciates your visit,’ noted Locke, rather than ‘would be most pleased to receive your audience.’ Countess Vira Saljesca of Lashain was the absolute ruler of Salon Corbeau; the demi-city was built on one of her estates. Equidistant from Balinel, Tal Verrar and Lashain, just out of convenient rulership by any of them, Salon Corbeau was more or less an autonomous resort state for the wealthy of the Brass Coast.

In addition to the constant arrival of carriages along the coast roads and pleasure-vessels from the sea, Salon Corbeau attracted one other noteworthy form of traffic, which Locke had meditated on in a melancholy fashion during his journey.

Ragged groups of peasants, urban poor and rural wretches alike, trudged wearily along the dusty roads to Lady Saljesca’s domain. They came in intermittent but ceaseless streams, flowing to the strange private city beneath the dark heights of the mountain.

Locke imagined that he already knew exactly what they were coming for, but his next few days in Salon Corbeau would prove that understanding to be woefully incomplete.