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

The bouncer who’d received Jean’s painful ministrations to his ribs at their previous meeting recoiled as Locke and Jean ran across the service courtyard toward him. Locke saw that he was wearing some sort of stiff brace beneath the thin fabric of his tunic.

‘Not here to hurt you,’ panted Locke. ‘Fetch . . . Selendri. Fetch her now.’

‘You’re not dressed to speak with—’

‘Fetch her now and earn a coin,’ said Locke, wiping sweat from his brow, ‘or stand there for two more seconds and get your fucking ribs re-broken.’

Half a dozen Sinspire attendants gathered around in case of trouble, but they made no hostile moves. A few minutes after the injured bouncer had disappeared within the tower, Selendri came back out in his place.

‘You two are supposed to be at sea—’

‘No time to explain, Selendri. The Archon has ordered us to be arrested. There’s a squad of Eyes coming up to get us as we speak. They’ll be here in minutes.’

‘What?’

‘He figured it out somehow,’ said Locke. ‘He knows we’ve been plotting with you against him, and—’

‘Don’t speak of this here,’ Selendri hissed.

‘Hide us. Hide us, please!’

Locke could see panic, frustration and calculation warring on the unscarred side of her face. Leave them here to their fate, and let them spill everything they knew to the Archon’s torturers? Kill them in the courtyard, before witnesses, without the plausible explanation of an ‘accidental’ fall? No. She had to take them in. For the moment.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘Hurry. You and you, search them.’

Sinspire attendants patted Locke and Jean down, coming up with their daggers and coin-purses. Selendri took them.

‘This one has a deck of cards,’ said an attendant after fishing in Locke’s tunic pockets.

‘He would,’ said Selendri. ‘I don’t give a damn. We’re going to the ninth floor.’

Into the grandeur of Requin’s shrine to avarice for one last time; through the crowds and the layers of smoke hanging like unquiet spirits in the air, up the wide, spiralling stairs through the floors of increasing quality and risk.

Locke glanced about as they went up; was it his imagination or were there no Priori preening in here tonight? Up to the fourth floor, up to the fifth - and there, naturally, he nearly walked into Maracosa Durenna, who gaped with a drink in her hand as Selendri and her guards dragged Locke and Jean past her. On Durenna’s face, Locke could see more than bafflement or irritation - oh, gods. She was pissed off.

Locke could only imagine how he and Jean looked to her - hairier, leaner and burned brown by the sun. Not to mention underdressed, sweaty and clearly in a great deal of trouble with the house. He grinned and waved at Durenna as they ascended the stairs, and she passed out of view.

Up through the last floors, through the most rarefied layers of the house. Still no Priori - coincidence, or encouraging sign?

Up into Requin’s office, where the Master of the ’Spire was standing before a mirror, pulling on a long-tailed black evening coat trimmed with cloth-of-silver. He bared his teeth at the sight of Locke and Jean, the malice in his eyes easily a match for the fiery alchemical glare of his optics.

‘Eyes of the Archon,’ said Selendri. ‘On their way to arrest Kosta and de Ferra.’

Requin growled, lunged forward like a fencer and backhanded Locke with astonishing force. He slid across the floor on his backside and slammed into Requin’s desk. Knick-knacks rattled alarmingly above him and a metal plate clattered to the tiles.

Jean moved forward, but the two burly Sinspire attendants grabbed him by the arms, and with a well-oiled click Selendri had her concealed blades out to dissuade him.

‘What did you do, Kosta?’ roared Requin. He kicked Locke in the stomach, knocking him back against the desk once again. A wineglass fell from the desktop and shattered against the floor.

‘Nothing,’ gasped Locke, ‘nothing, he just knew, Requin, he knew we were conspiring against him; we had to run. Eyes on our heels.’

‘Eyes coming to my ’Spire,’ Requin growled. ‘Eyes that may be about to violate a rather important tradition of the Golden Steps. You’ve put me in a very tenuous situation, Kosta. You’ve fucked everything up, haven’t you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Locke, crawling to his hands and knees, ‘I’m sorry, there was nowhere else to run. If he . . . if he got his hands on us—’

‘Quite,’ said Requin. ‘I’m going down to deal with your pursuers. You two will remain here. We’ll discuss this the moment I get back.’

When you come back, thought Locke, you’ll have more of your attendants with you. And Jean and I will ‘slip’ out of the window.

It was time to do it.

Requin’s boot-heels echoed first against tile, then against the iron of his little staircase as he descended to the level below. The two attendants holding Jean released him but kept their eyes on him, while Selendri leaned back atop Requin’s desk with her blades out. She stared coldly at Locke as he got back to his feet, wincing.

‘No more sweet nothings to mutter in my ear, Kosta?’

‘Selendri, I—’

‘Did you know he was planning to kill you, Master de Ferra? That his dealings with us these past few months hinged on our allowing that to happen?’

‘Selendri, listen, please—’

‘I knew you were a poor investment,’ she said. ‘I just never realized the situation would turn so quickly.’

‘Yes, you were right. I was a bad investment, and I don’t doubt that Requin will listen more closely to you in the future. Because I never wanted to kill Jerome de Ferra. Jerome de Ferra isn’t a real person. Neither is Calo Callas.

‘In fact,’ he said, grinning broadly, ‘you have just delivered us exactly where we need to be, for the pay-off to two long years of hard work, so we can rob the fucking hell out of you and your boss.’

The next sound in the room was that of a Sinspire attendant hitting the wall, with the impression of one of Jean’s fists reddening an entire side of his face.

Selendri acted with remarkable speed, but Locke was ready for her; not to fight, but simply to duck and weave, and to stay away from that bladed hand of hers. He vaulted over the desk, scattering papers, and laughed as the two of them feinted from side to side, dancing to see who would stumble past its protective bulk first.

‘You die, then, Kosta,’ she said.

‘Oh, and you were planning to spare us. Please. By the way - Leocanto Kosta’s not real, either. So many little things you just do not know, eh?’

Behind them, Jean grappled with the second attendant. Jean slammed his forehead into the man’s face, breaking his nose, and the man fell to his knees, burbling. Jean stepped behind him and drove his elbow down on the back of the man’s neck with all of his upper body behind it. Involved as he was in avoiding Selendri, Locke winced at the noise the attendant’s skull made as it struck the floor.

A moment later, Jean loomed behind Selendri, blood from the attendant’s broken nose streaming down his face. She slashed with her blades, but Jean’s anger had him in a rare, vicious form. He caught her brass forearm, folded her in half with a punch to the stomach, whirled her around and held her by the arms. She writhed and fought for breath.

‘This is a nice office,’ said Jean quietly, as though he’d just shaken hands with Selendri and her attendants rather than beaten the hell out of them. Locke frowned, but went on with the scheme - time was of the essence.

‘Watch closely, Selendri, because I can only do this trick once,’ he said, producing his deck of fraudulent playing cards and shuffling them theatrically. ‘Is there any liquor in the house? A very strong liquor, the sort that brings tears to a man’s eyes and fire to his throat?’ He feigned surprise at the presence of a brandy bottle on the shelf behind Requin’s desk, next to a silver bowl filled with flowers.

Locke seized the bowl, tossed the flowers on the floor and set the empty container atop the desk. He then opened the brandy bottle and poured the brown liquor into the bowl, to a depth of about three fingers.

‘Now, as you can see, I hold nothing in my hands save this perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary deck of perfectly unremarkable playing cards. Or do I?’ He gave the deck one last shuffle and then dropped it into the bowl. The alchemical cards softened, distended and began to bubble and foam. Their pictures and symbols dissolved, first into a colour-streaked white mess, then into an oily grey goo. Locke found a rounded butter knife on a small plate at a corner of the desk and used it to vigorously stir the grey goo until all traces of the playing cards had vanished.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Selendri asked

‘Making alchemical cement,’ said Locke. ‘Little wafers of resin, painted to look like cards, formulated to react with strong liquor. Sweet gods above, you do not want to know what this cost me. Hell, I had no choice but to come and rob you after I had it made.’

‘What do you intend—’

‘As I know from vivid personal experience,’ said Locke, ‘this shit dries harder than steel.’ He ran over to the spot on the wall where the climbing closet would emerge and began to slather the grey goo all over the faint cracks that marked its door. ‘So once I paint it all over this lovely concealed entrance, and then pour it into the lock of the main door, why - in about a minute, Requin’s going to need a battering ram if he wants to see his office again this evening.’

Selendri tried to scream for help, but the old damage to her throat was too much; it was a loud and eerie sound, but it didn’t carry downstairs with the force she needed. Locke scampered down the iron stairs, closed the main doors to Requin’s office and hurriedly sealed the locking mechanism within a glob of already-firming cement.

‘And now,’ he said when he returned to the centre of the office, ‘the next curiosity of the evening, concerning this lovely suite of chairs with which I furnished our esteemed host. It turns out that I do know what the Talathri Baroque is after all, and that there is a reason why someone in his right mind would build such a nice thing out of a wood as fundamentally weak as shear-crescent.’

Locke seized one of the chairs. He tore the seat cushion and its underlying panel off with his bare hands, exposing a shallow chamber within the seat packed tight with tools and equipment - knives, a leather climbing belt, clips and descenders, and assorted other implements. He shook these out onto the ground with a clatter and then hoisted the chair above his head, grinning.

‘It makes ’em so much easier to smash.’

And that he did, bringing the chair down hard on Requin’s floor. It shattered at all the joints, but didn’t fly apart because its splintered chunks were held together by something threaded through the hollow cavities within its legs and back. Locke fumbled with the wreckage for a few moments before successfully extracting several long lengths of demi-silk line.

Locke took one of these, and with Jean’s help soon had Selendri tied into the chair behind Requin’s desk. She kicked and spat and even tried to bite them, but it was no use.

Once she was secured, Locke picked a knife out of the pile of tools on the ground while Jean got to work smashing the other three chairs and extracting their hidden contents. As Locke approached Selendri with the blade in his hand, she gave him a contemptuous stare.

‘I can’t tell you anything meaningful,’ she said. ‘The vault is at the base of the tower and you’ve just sealed yourselves up here. So frighten me all you like, Kosta, but I have no idea what you think you’re doing.’

‘Oh, you think this is for you?’ Locke smiled. ‘Selendri. I thought we knew each other better than that. As for the vault, who the hell said anything about it?’

‘Your work to find a way in—’

‘I lied, Selendri. I’ve been known to do that. You think I was really experimenting on clockwork locks and keeping notes for Maxilan Stragos? Like hell. I was sipping brandies on your first and second floors, trying to pull myself back together after I nearly got cut to pieces. Your vault’s fucking impenetrable, sweetheart. I never wanted to go anywhere near it.’

Locke glanced around, pretending to notice the room for the very first time.

‘Requin does keep a lot of really expensive paintings on his walls, though, doesn’t he?’

With a grin that felt even larger than it was, Locke stepped up to the closest one and began, ever so carefully, to cut it out of its surrounding frame.