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

Six months had passed since his return from Salon Corbeau; the suite of four exquisitely crafted chairs was safely locked away in a private storage room at the Villa Candessa. Tal Verrar’s version of late winter held the region in the grip of temperatures so brisk that folk had to engage in actual labour to break a sweat.

About an hour’s hard ride north of Tal Verrar, just past the village of Vo Sarmara and its surrounding fields, a scrubby forest of gnarled witchwood and amberthorn trees rose beside a wide, rocky vale. The walls of this vale were the greyish colour of corpse-flesh, giving the place the look of a giant wound in the earth. The thin olive-coloured grass abandoned the struggle for life about ten feet from the edge of the cliffs above this vale, where Locke and Jean stood contemplating the sheer hundred-foot drop to the gravel floor far below.

‘I suppose we should’ve kept more in practice with this,’ said Jean, starting to shrug his way out of the half-dozen coils of rope draped from his right shoulder to his left hip. ‘But then, I don’t recall many opportunities to put it to use during the past few years.’

‘Most places in Camorr we could just hand-over-hand it, up and down,’ said Locke. ‘I don’t think you were even with us that night we used ropes to get up Lady de Marre’s tower at that horrible old estate of hers . . . Calo and Galdo and I nearly got pecked to bloody shreds by pigeons working that one. Must’ve been five, six years ago.’

‘Oh, I was with you, remember? On the ground, keeping watch. I saw the bit with the pigeons. Hard to play sentry when you’re pissing yourself laughing.’

‘Wasn’t funny at all from up top. Beaky little bastards were vicious!’

‘The Death of a Thousand Pecks,’ said Jean. ‘You would have been legends, dying so gruesomely. I’d have written a book on the man-eating pigeons of Camorr and joined the Therin Collegium. Gone respectable. Bug and I would’ve built a memorial statue to the Sanzas, with a nice plaque.’

‘What about me?’

‘Footnote on the plaque. Space permitting.’

‘Hand over some rope or I’ll show you the edge of the cliff, space permitting.’

Jean tossed a coil to Locke, who plucked it out of the air and walked back toward the edge of the forest, about thirty feet from the cliff. The rope was tightly woven demi-silk, much lighter than hemp and much more expensive. At the rim of the forest, Locke selected a tall old witchwood about as broad around as Jean’s shoulders. He pulled a goodly length of his line free, passed it around the tree-trunk and stared at the slightly frayed end for a few seconds, trying to rekindle his memories of knot-tying.

As his fingers slipped into hesitant motion, he took a quick glance around at the melancholy state of the world. A stiff wind was blowing from the north-west, and the sky was one vast cataract of wet-looking haze. Their hired carriage was parked at the far end of the woods, perhaps three hundred yards away. He and Jean had set the driver up with a clay jug of beer and a splendid basket lunch from the Villa Candessa, promising to be gone for a few hours at most.

‘Jean,’ muttered Locke as the bigger man stepped up beside him, ‘this is a proper anchor-noose, right?’

‘Certainly looks like it.’ Jean hefted the elaborate knot that secured the rope in a bight around the tree and nodded. He took the working end of the rope and added an additional half hitch for safety. ‘There. Just right.’

He and Locke worked together for a few minutes, repeating the anchor-noose knot with three further lengths of rope until the old witchwood tree was thoroughly decorated with taut demi-silk. Their spare coils of rope were set aside. The two men then slipped out of their long frock coats and their vests, revealing heavy leather belts studded with iron rings at their waists.

The belts weren’t quite like the custom climbing harnesses treasured by the more responsible burglars of Camorr; these were actually nautical in origin, used by those happy sailors whose ship-owners cared enough to spend a bit of money to preserve their health. The belts had been available on the cheap and had spared Locke and Jean the need to suss out a contact in Tal Verrar’s underworld who could make a pair to order . . . but remember the transaction. There were a few things Requin would be better off not knowing until the chance finally came to spring the game on him.

‘Right, then. Here’s your descender.’ Jean passed Locke a fairly heavy bit of iron, a figure-eight with one side larger than the other and a thick bar right down the middle. He also kept one for himself; he’d had them knocked up by a blacksmith in Tal Verrar’s Istrian Crescent a few weeks earlier. ‘Let’s get you rigged-up first. Main line, then belay.’

Locke clipped his descender into one of his harness rings and threaded it through with one of the demi-silk lines leading back to the tree. The other end of this line was left free and tossed toward the cliff. A second line was lashed tight to a harness ring above Locke’s opposite hip. Many Camorri thieves on working jobs ‘danced naked’, without the added safety of a belay line in case their primary rope broke, but for today’s practice session Locke and Jean were in firm agreement that they were going to play it safe and boring.

It took a few minutes to rig Jean up in a similar fashion; soon enough they were each attached to the tree by two lines, like a pair of human puppets. The two thieves wore little save their tunics, breeches, field boots and leather gloves, though Jean did pause to slip his reading optics on.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Looks like a fine day for abseiling. Care to do the honours before we kiss solid earth farewell?’

‘Crooked Warden,’ said Locke, ‘men are stupid. Protect us from ourselves. If you can’t, let it be quick and painless.’

‘Well said.’ Jean took a deep breath. ‘Crazy part on three?’

‘On three.’

Each of them took up their coiled main line and tossed the free end over the cliff; the two ropes went over and uncoiled with a soft hiss.

‘One,’ said Locke.

‘Two,’ said Jean.

‘Three,’ they said together. Then they ran for the cliff and threw themselves off, whooping as they went.

For one brief moment Locke’s stomach and the misty grey sky seemed to be turning a somersault in unison. Then his line was taut and the cliff-face was rushing toward him just a little too eagerly for his taste. Like a human pendulum, he swung in, raised his legs and hit the rock wall about eight feet beneath the rim, keeping his knees bent to absorb the shock of impact. That much, at least, he remembered very well. Jean hit with a heavier whoomp about two feet below him.

‘Heh,’ said Locke, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, loud enough to match the whisper of the wind. ‘There’s got to be an easier way to test whether or not we have an honest rope-weaver, Jean.’

‘Whew!’ Jean shifted his feet slightly, keeping a hold on his line with both hands. The descenders made it easy for them to apply enough friction to the rope to slow or stop at will. The little devices were a marked improvement on what they’d been taught as boys. While they could still no doubt slide down a rope using their own bodies for friction, as they once had, it was easy to abrade a certain protruding portion of the male anatomy with that approach if one was careless or unlucky.

For a few moments they simply hung there, feet against the cliffside, enjoying their new vantage point as the vaporous clouds rolled by overhead. The ropes waving in the air beneath them only hung down about half the distance to the ground, but they didn’t intend to get there today anyway. There would be plenty of time to work up to longer drops in future practice sessions.

‘You know,’ said Locke, ‘this is the only part of the plan, I must admit, that I wasn’t terribly sure of. It’s so much easier to contemplate abseiling from a height like this than it is to actually run off a cliff with just two lengths of rope between you and Aza Guilla.’

‘Ropes and cliffs are no problem,’ said Jean. ‘What we need to watch out for up here are your carnivorous pigeons.’

‘Oh, bend over and bite your own arse.’

‘I’m serious. I’m terrified. I’ll keep a sharp lookout lest the last thing we feel in this life should be that terrible swift pecking-’

‘Jean, your belay line must be weighing you down. Here, let me cut it for you . . .’

They kicked and shoved good-naturedly against one another for a few minutes, Locke scrambling around and trying to use his agility to balance out Jean’s far greater strength and mass. Strength and mass seemed to be winning the day, however, so in a fit of self-preservation he suggested they actually practise descending.

‘Sure,’ said Jean, ‘let’s go down five or six feet, nice and smooth, and stop on my mark, shall we?’

Each of them gripped his taut main line and released a bit of tension on his descender. Slowly, smoothly, they slipped down a good two yards, and Jean cried, ‘Hold!’

‘Not bad,’ said Locke. ‘The knack seems to come back quick, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose. I was never really keen on this after I got back from my little holiday at Revelation House. This was more your thing, and the Sanzas’, than mine. And, ah, Sabetha’s, of course.’

‘Yeah,’ said Locke, wistfully. ‘Yeah, she was so mad . . . so mad and so lovely. I used to love watching her climb. She didn’t like ropes. She’d . . . take her boots off, and let her hair out, and wouldn’t even wear gloves sometimes. Just her breeches and her blouse . . . and I would just—’

‘Sit there hypnotized,’ said Jean. ‘Struck dumb. Hey, my eyes worked back then too, Locke.’

‘Heh. I suppose it must have been obvious. Gods.’ Locke stared at Jean and laughed nervously. ‘Gods, I’m actually bringing her up myself. I don’t believe it.’ His expression turned shrewd. ‘Are we all right with each other, Jean? Back to being comfortable, I mean?’

‘Hell, we’re hanging together eighty feet above a messy death, aren’t we? I don’t do that with people I don’t like.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘And yeah, I’d say we’re—’

‘Gentlemen! Hello down there!’

The voice was Verrari, with a rough rustic edge. Locke and Jean glanced up in surprise and saw a man standing at the edge of the cliff, arms akimbo, silhouetted against the churning sky. He wore a threadbare cloak with the hood thrown up.

‘Er, hello up there,’ said Locke.

‘Fine day for a bit of sport, ain’t it?’

‘That’s exactly what we thought,’ cried Jean.

‘A fine day indeed, beggin’ your pardons, sirs. And a fine set o’ coats and vests you’ve gone and left up here. I like them very much, exceptin’ that there ain’t no purses in the pockets.’

‘Of course not, we’re not stu- Hey, come on now. Kindly don’t mess with our things,’ said Jean. As if by some unspoken signal, he and Locke reached out to brace themselves against the cliff, finding hand- and footholds as quickly as they could.

‘Why not? They’re such fine things, sirs, I just can’t help but feel sort of drawn to them, like.’

‘If you’ll just wait right there,’ said Locke, preparing to begin climbing, ‘one of us should be up in a few minutes and I’m sure we can discuss this civilly.’

‘I’m also sort of drawn to the idea of keepin’ you two down there, if it’s all the same to you, gents.’ The man moved slightly and a hatchet appeared in his right hand. ‘It’s a mighty fine pair of choppers you’ve left up here with your coats, too. Damned fine. Ain’t never seen the like.’

‘That’s very polite of you to say,’ yelled Locke.

‘Oh, sweet jumping fuck,’ muttered Jean.

‘I might point out, however,’ continued Locke, ‘that our man at the carriage is due to check on us soon, and he’ll have his crossbow with him.’

‘Oh, you mean the unconscious fellow I, like, jacked over the head with a rock, sir? Sorry to report that he was drunk.’

‘I don’t believe you. We didn’t give him that much beer!’

‘Beggin’ pardon, but he weren’t all that much man, gents. Skinny fellow, if you savvy. As it is, he’s sleepin’ now. And he didn’t have no crossbow anyway. I checked.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t blame us for trying,’ said Locke.

‘I don’t, not one little bit. Good try. Very creditable, like. But I’m sort of interested, if you don’t mind, in the wheres-abouts of your purses.’

‘Safely down here with us,’ said Locke. ‘We might be convinced to surrender them, but you’ll have to help haul us up if you want them.’

‘Now, on that subject,’ said the stranger, ‘you an’ I have a sort of difference in outlook, like. Since I know you’ve got ’em, now, I think it’s easier to just chop you down and collect ’em at my ease.’

‘Unless you’re a much better rock climber than you look,’ said Jean, ‘it’s one hell of a way down and back for the sake of our little purses!’

‘And they are little,’ said Locke. ‘Our rock-climbing purses. Specially made not to weigh us down. Hardly hold anything!’

‘I think we probably got different ideas of what anythin’ is. And I wouldn’t have to climb,’ said the stranger. ‘There’s easier ways down to that valley floor, if you know where to go.’

‘Ah . . . don’t be foolish,’ said Jean. ‘These ropes are demi-silk. It’ll take you some time to cut through them. Longer than it will take for us to climb back up, surely.’

‘Probably,’ said the man in the cloak. ‘But I’m still up here if you do, ain’t I? I can just crack you over the edge and make your skulls into soup bowls, like. See if I don’t!’

‘But if we stay down here, we’ll die anyway, so we might as well come up and die fighting,’ said Locke.

‘Well, have it your way, sir. Whole conversation’s gettin’ sort of circular, if you don’t mind me sayin’, so I’m just gonna start cuttin’ rope now. Me, I’d stay put and go quiet, was I you.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re a miserable cur,’ shouted Locke. ‘Any child of three could murder helpless men hanging over a cliff. Time was when a bandit would have the balls to fight us face to face and earn his pay!’

‘What do I rightly look like, sir, an honest tradesmen? Guild tats on my arms?’ He knelt down and began to chop at something, steadily, with Jean’s hatchet. ‘Splattin’ you against those rocks below seems a fine way of earnin’ my pay. Even finer if you’re gonna speak so unkind.’

‘You’re a wretch,’ cried Locke. ‘A cringing dog, a scrub, damned not just for avarice but for cowardice! The gods spit on those without honour, you know! It’ll be a cold hell, and a dark one, for you!’

‘I’m chock full of honour, sir. Got lots of it. Keep it right here between my empty stomach and my puckered white arse, which you may kiss, by the way.’

‘Fine, fine,’ said Locke. ‘I merely wanted to see if you could be goaded to misjudgement. I applaud your restraint! But surely there’s more profit to be had in hoisting us up and holding us for ransom!’

‘We’re important people,’ said Jean.

‘With rich, important friends. Why not just hold us prisoner and send a letter with a ransom demand?’

‘Well,’ said the man, ‘for one thing, I can’t read nor write.’

‘We’d be happy to write the demand for you!’

‘Can’t rightly see how that’d work. You could just write anythin’ you like, couldn’t you? Ask for constables and soldiers instead of gold, if you take my meanin’. I said I can’t read, not that I got worm piss for brains.’

‘Whoa! Hold it! Stop cutting!’ Jean heaved himself up another foot and braced his rope within the descender to hold him. ‘Stop cutting! I have a serious question!’

‘What’s that, then?’

‘Where the hell did you come from?’

‘Roundabouts, here and there, by way of my mother’s womb, original like,’ said the man, who continued chopping.

‘No, I mean, do you always watch these cliffs for climbers? Seems bloody unlikely they’d be common enough to skulk in ambush for.’

‘Oh, they isn’t, sir. Ain’t never seen any, before you two. Was so curious I just had to come down and take a peek, and ain’t I glad I did?’ Chop, chop, chop. ‘No, mostly I hide in the woods, sometimes the hills. Watch the roads.’

‘All by yourself?’

‘I’d be cuttin’ you down faster if I wasn’t by myself, wouldn’t I?’

‘So you watch the roads. Looking to rob what, carriages?’

‘Mostly.’

‘You have a bow or a crossbow?’

‘Sadly, no. Think maybe I might buy a piece if I can get enough for your things.’

‘You hide in the woods, all by yourself, and try to ambush carriages without a real weapon?’

‘Well,’ said the man a bit hesitantly, ‘has been awhile since I got one. But today’s my lucky day, ain’t it?’

‘I should say so. Crooked Warden, you must be the worst highwayman under the sun.’

‘What did you say?’

‘He said,’ said Locke, ‘that in his highly educated opinion you’re the—’

‘No, the other part.’

‘He mentioned the Crooked Warden,’ said Locke. ‘Does that mean something to you? We’re members of the same fraternity, friend! The Benefactor, the Thiefwatcher, the Nameless Thirteenth, patron of you and me and all who take the twisty path through life. We’re actually consecrated servants of the Crooked Warden! There’s no need for animosity, and no need for you to cut us down!’

‘Oh yes there is,’ said the man vehemently, ‘now I’m definitely cuttin’ you down.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Bloody fuckin’ heretics, you are! There ain’t no Thirteenth! Ain’t naught but the Twelve, that’s truth! Yeah, I been to Verrar a couple times, met up with lads and lasses from the cuttin’ crews what tried to tell me ’bout this Thirteenth. I don’t hold with it. Ain’t right like I was raised. So down you go, boys!’ The man began hacking at the demi-silk ropes with a vengeance.

‘Shit. Want to try and snag him in the belay lines?’ Jean swung over beside Locke and spoke with soft urgency. Locke nodded. The two thieves took hold of the ends of their belay lines, stared upward and, at Jean’s whispered signal, yanked them downward.

It was hardly an efficient trap; the lines were slack and coiled up above the cliffedge. Their tormentor looked down at his feet, hopped up and stepped away as seven or eight feet of each belay line slipped over the cliff’s edge.

‘Ha! You’ll have to get up earlier than that, gents, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so!’ Whistling tunelessly, he vanished out of sight and continued chopping. A moment later he gave a cry of triumph and Locke’s coiled belay line flew over the edge of the cliff. Locke averted his face as the rope fell just past him; it was soon dangling in thin air from his waistbelt, its frayed far end still too many feet above the ground for safety.

‘Shit,’ said Locke. ‘Right, Jean. Here’s what we do. He should cut my main line next. Let’s hook arms. I’ll slide down your main line, knot what’s left of mine to the bottom, and that should probably get us within twenty feet or so of the ground. If I haul up my belay line and knot that on the end of the other two, we can make it all the way down.’

‘Depends on how quickly that arsehole cuts. You think you can tie knots fast enough?’

‘I think I’ve got no choice. My hands feel up to the task, at least. Even if I just get one line lashed, twenty feet’s a happier fall than eighty.’

At that moment, there was a faint rumble of thunder overhead. Locke and Jean looked up at just the right moment to feel the first few drops of rain on their faces.

‘It’s possible,’ said Locke, ‘that this would be really fucking amusing right now, were it anyone but us down on these ropes.’

‘At the moment, I think I’d take my chances with your pigeons if I could,’ said Jean. ‘Damn, I’m sorry for leaving the Wicked Sisters up there, Locke.’

‘Why in Venaportha’s name would you have brought them down? There’s nothing to apologize for.’

‘Although,’ said Jean, ‘maybe there is one other thing I could try. You carrying sleeve-steel?’

‘Yeah, one, but it’s in my boot.’ The rain was beating down fairly hard now, soaking through their tunics and wetting their lines. Their light dress and the stiff breeze made it feel colder than it really was. ‘Yourself?’

‘Got mine right here.’ Locke saw a flash of bright metal in Jean’s right hand. ‘Yours balanced for throwing, Locke?’

‘Shit, no. Sorry.’

‘No worries. Hold it in reserve, then. And give us a good silent prayer.’ Jean paused to pluck off his optics and tuck them into his tunic collar, then raised his voice. ‘Hey! Sheep-lover! A word if you please!’

‘I sort of thought we was done talkin’,’ came the man’s voice from above the cliff’s edge.

‘No doubt! I’ll wager using so many words in so short a time makes your brain feel like a squeezed lemon, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t have the wit to find the fucking ground if I threw you out of a bloody window! Are you listening? You’d have to take your shoes and breeches off to count to twenty-one! You’d have to look up to see the underside of cockroach shit!’

‘Does it help, yellin’ at me like that? Seems like you should be prayin’ to your useless Thirteenth or somethin’, but what would I know? I ain’t one of you big-time Verrari felantozzers or whatever, am I?’

‘You want to know why you shouldn’t kill us? You want to know why you shouldn’t let us hit that valley floor?’ Jean hollered at the top of his lungs, while bracing his feet more firmly against the cliffside and pulling back his right arm. Thunder echoed overhead. ‘See this, you idiot? See what I’ve got in my hands? Something you’ll see only once in a lifetime! Something you’ll never forget!’

A few seconds later, the man’s head and torso appeared over the edge of the cliff. Jean let out a cry as he flung his knife with all of his strength. They cry became triumphant as he saw the blurred shape of his weapon strike home in their tormentor’s face . . . and changed yet again to a frustrated groan as he saw the knife bounce back and fall away into thin air. It had struck hilt-first.

‘Fucking rain!’ yelled Jean.

The bandit was in serious pain, at least. He moaned and clutched his face, teetering forward. A nice hard smack in the eye? Jean fervently hoped so - perhaps he still had a few seconds to try again.

‘Locke, your knife, quickly!’

Locke was reaching into his right boot when the man thrust his arms out for balance, lost it and toppled screaming over the edge of the cliff. He got one hand around Locke’s main line a second later and fell directly into the crook of Locke’s waist and rope, where they met at the iron descender on his belt. The shock knocked Locke’s legs away from the cliff and the breath from his lungs, and for a second he and the bandit were in free fall, flailing and screaming in a tangle of arms and legs, with no proper pressure on the line in the descender.

Straining himself to the utmost, Locke curled his left hand around the free side of the line and tugged hard, putting enough tension on the rope to snap them to a halt. They swung into the cliff-face together, the bandit taking the brunt of the impact, and dangled there in a struggling mess of limbs while Locke fought to breathe and make sense of the world. The bandit kicked and screamed.

‘Stop that, you fucking moron!’ They appeared to have fallen about fifteen feet; Jean slipped rapidly down beside them, alighted on the cliff and reached out with one hand to grab the bandit by the hair. With the hood thrown back, Locke could see that the fellow was grizzled like an underfed hound, perhaps forty, with long, greasy hair and a grey beard as scrubby as the grass on the cliff’s edge. His left eye was swelling shut. ‘Stop kicking, you idiot! Hold still!’

‘Oh, gods, please don’t drop me! Please don’t kill me, sir!’

‘Why the fuck not?’ Locke groaned, dug his heels into the cliff and managed to reach the edge of his right boot with his right hand. A moment later he had his stiletto out at the bandit’s throat, and the man’s panicked kicking became a terrified quivering.

‘See this?’ Locke hissed. The bandit nodded. ‘This is a knife. They have these, wherever the fuck you came from?’ The man nodded again. ‘So you know I could just stick you right now and let you fall, right?’

‘Please, please don’t—’

‘Shut up and listen. This single line that you and I are dangling from right now. Single, solitary, alone! This wouldn’t be the line you were just chopping at up there, would it?’

The man nodded vigorously, his good eye wide.

‘Isn’t that splendid? Well, if the shock of your fall didn’t break it, we’re probably safe for a little while longer.’ White light flashed somewhere above them and thunder rolled, louder than before. ‘Though I have been much more comfortable. So don’t kick. Don’t flail. Don’t struggle. And don’t do anything fucking stupid. Savvy?’

‘Oh, no, sir, oh please—’

‘Shut up already.’

‘Lo . . . er, Leocanto,’ said Jean. ‘I’m thinking this fellow deserves some flying lessons.’

‘I’m thinking the same thing,’ said Locke, ‘but thieves prosper, right, Jerome? Help me haul this stupid bastard back up there somehow.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank—’

‘Know why I’m doing this, you witless woodland clown?’

‘No, but I—’

‘Shut it. What’s your name?’

‘Trav!’

‘Trav what?’

‘Never had no after-name, sir. Trav of Vo Sarmara is all.’

‘And you’re a thief? A highwayman?’

‘Yes, yes I am—’

‘Nothing else? Do any honest work?’

‘Er, no, not for some time now—’

‘Good. Then we are brothers of a sort. Look, my smelly friend, the thing you have to understand is that there is a Thirteenth. He does have a priesthood, and I’m one of his priests, savvy?’

‘If you say so—’

‘No, shut up. I don’t want you to agree with me, I want you to use your misplaced acorn of a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again. I have a blade at your throat, we’re seventy feet above the ground, it’s pissing a nice, hard rain and you just tried to murder me. By all rights, I ought to give you a red smile from ear to ear and let you drop. Would you agree with that?’

‘Oh, probably, sir, gods, I’m sorry—’

‘Hush now, sweet moron. So you’d admit that I must have a pretty powerful reason for not satisfying myself with your death?’

‘I, uh, I suppose so!’

‘I’m a divine of the Crooked Warden, like I said. Sworn to the service and the mandates of the god of our kind. Seems kind of a waste to spit in the face of the god that looks out for you and yours, doesn’t it? Especially since I’m not so sure I’ve been doing right by Him recently.’

‘Uh—’

‘I should kill you. Instead, I’m going to try to save your life. All I want you to do is think about this. Do I still seem like a heretic to you?’

‘Uh . . . oh, gods, sir, I can’t think straight—’

‘Well, nothing unusual there, I’d wager. Remember what I said. Don’t flail, don’t kick, don’t scream. And if you try to fight, even the tiniest bit, our arrangement’s off. Wrap your arms around my chest and shut up. We’re a good, long way from sitting pretty.’