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

‘Hey,’ said Locke. ‘Congratulations! We’re reverse burglars, here to give you fifty gold solari!’ He tossed his coin-purse at the servant, who caught it in one hand and gaped at its weight. In the next second and a half he spent not raising an alarm, Jean coshed him.

They’d come in through the north-west corner of the top storey of the Cordo family manor; battlements and iron spikes had made a climb to the roof unattractive. It was just shy of the tenth hour of the evening, a perfect late-Aurim night on the Sea of Brass, and Locke and Jean had already squirmed through a thorny hedgerow, dodged three parties of guards and gardeners and spent twenty minutes scaling the damp, smooth stone of Cordo Manor just to get this far.

Their makeshift priestly robes of Callo Androno, along with most of their other needs, were tucked into backpacks sewn with haste by Jabril. Possibly thanks to those robes, no one had loosed a crossbow bolt at them since they’d set foot on solid Verrari ground, but the night was young, thought Locke - so very, very young.

Jean dragged the unconscious servant into the window alcove and glanced around for other complications while Locke quietly slipped the double frosted-glass windows shut and rehitched their latch. Only a slender, carefully bent piece of metal had allowed him to open that latch; the Right People of Camorr called the tool a ‘breadwinner’, because if you could get in and out of a household rich enough to own latching glass windows, your dinner was assured.

As it happened, Locke and Jean had stolen into just enough great houses much like this one - if none quite so vast - to know vaguely where to look for their quarry. Master bedchambers were often located adjacent to comforts like smoking rooms, studies, sitting parlours and-

‘Library,’ muttered Jean as he and Locke padded quietly down the right-hand corridor. Alchemical lights in tastefully curtained alcoves gave the place a pleasantly dim orange-gold glow. Through a pair of open doors in the middle of the hall, on their left, Locke could just glimpse shelves of books and scrolls. No other servants were in sight.

The library was a thing of minor wonder; there must have been a thousand volumes, as well as hundreds of scrolls in orderly racks and cases. Charts of the constellations, painted on alchemically bleached leather, decorated the few empty spots on the walls. Two closed doors led to other inner rooms, one to their left and one in front of them.

Locke flattened himself against the left-hand door, listening. He heard a faint murmur and turned to Jean, only to find that Jean had halted in his tracks next to one of the bookshelves. He reached out, plucked a slim octavo volume - perhaps six inches in height - from the stacks and hurriedly stuffed it into his backpack. Locke grinned.

At that moment, the left-hand door opened directly into him, giving him a harmless but painful knock on the back of the head. He whirled to find himself face to face with a young woman carrying an empty silver tray. She opened her mouth to scream and there was nothing else for it: Locke’s left hand shot out to cover her mouth while his right went for a dagger. He pushed her back into the room from which she’d come, and past the door Locke felt his feet sinking into plush carpet an inch deep.

Jean came through right behind him and slammed the door. The servant’s tray fell to the carpet and Locke pushed her aside. She fell into Jean’s arms with an ‘Oooomph!’ of surprise, and Locke found himself at the foot of a bed that was roughly ten feet on a side, draped in enough silk to sail a rather substantial yacht.

Seated on pillows at the far end of that bed, looking vaguely comical with his thin body surrounded by so much empty, opulent space, was a wizened old man. His long hair, the colour of sea-foam, fell free to his shoulders above a green silk gown. He was sorting through a pile of papers by alchemical light as Locke, Jean and the unwilling servant woman all barged into his quarters.

‘Marius Cordo, I presume,’ said Locke. ‘For the future, might I suggest an investment in some artificer gearwork for your window latches?’

The old man’s eyes went wide and the papers scattered from his hands. ‘Oh, gods,’ he cried, ‘oh, gods protect me! It’s you!’