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

As Xandrin cried out and stumbled forward, Merrain kicked at Locke, a fast attack rather than a solid one. She caught his arm and the vial flew from his fingers; Locke barely had time to yell, ‘Shit!’ before he was diving after it, heedless of the gravel he was about to skin himself against or anything else Merrain might care to do to him. He plucked the still-intact vial off the ground, uttered a whisper of thanks and was then knocked aside as Jean rushed past, arms extended.

As he hit the ground with the vial clutched to his chest, Locke saw Merrain wind up and hurl her knife; Jean struck her at the moment of release, so that rather than impaling Stragos through the neck or chest as she’d clearly intended, she bounced her blade off the gravel at his feet. The Archon flinched away from the weapon nonetheless.

Merrain, improbably, put up an effective struggle against Jean; she freed one arm from his grasp somehow and elbowed him in the ribs. Lithe and no doubt desperate as all hell, she kicked his left foot, broke his grip and tried to stumble away. Jean retained enough of a hold on her tunic to tear off her left sleeve all the way to the shoulder; thrown off-balance as it gave way, he fell to the ground.

Locke caught a flash of an elaborate, dark tattoo against the pale skin of Merrain’s upper arm - something like a grapevine entwined around a sword. Then she was off like a crossbow bolt, darting into the night, away from Jean and the false Eyes who chased her in vain for a few dozen steps before giving up and swearing loudly.

‘Well, what the—Oh, hell,’ said Locke, noticing for the first time that the false Eye Merrain had stabbed, along with Xandrin, was writhing on the ground with rivulets of foaming saliva trickling from the corners of his mouth. ‘Oh, shit, shit, hell,’ Locke shouted, bending helplessly over the dying alchemist. The convulsions ceased in just a few seconds, and Locke stared down at the single vial of antidote in his hands, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

‘No,’ said Jean from behind him. ‘Oh, gods, why did she do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Locke.

‘What the hell do we do?’

‘We . . . shit. Damned if I know that, either.’

‘You should—’

‘Nobody’s doing anything,’ said Locke. ‘I’ll keep this safe. Once this is over, we’ll sit down with it, have dinner, talk it over. We’ll come up with something.’

‘You can—’

‘Time to go,’ said Locke, as firmly as he could. ‘Get what we came here for and go, before things get more complicated.’ Before troops loyal to the Archon notice that he’s having a bad night. Before Lyonis finds out that Requin is actually hunting for us as we speak. Before some other gods-damned surprise crawls out of the ground to bite us on the arse.

‘Cordo,’ he shouted, ‘where’s that bag you promised?’

Lyonis gestured to one of his surviving false Eyes, and the woman passed a heavy burlap sack to Locke. Locke shook it out - it was wider than he was, and nearly six feet long.

‘Well, Maxilan,’ he said, ‘I offered you the chance to forget all of this, and let us go, and keep what you had, but you had to be a fucking arsehole, didn’t you?’

‘Kosta,’ said Stragos, at least rediscovering his voice, ‘I . . . I can give you—’

‘You can’t give me a gods-damned thing.’ Stragos appeared to be thinking of making an attempt for Merrain’s dagger, so Locke gave it a hard kick. It skittered across the gravel and into the darkness of the gardens. ‘Those of us in our profession, those who hold with the Crooked Warden, have a little tradition we follow when someone close to us dies. In this case, someone who got killed as a result of this mad fucking scheme of yours.’

‘Kosta, don’t throw away what I can offer—’

‘We call it a death-offering,’ said Locke. ‘Means we steal something of value, proportional to the life we lost. Except in this case I don’t think there’s anything in the world that qualifies. But we’re doing our best.’

Jean stepped up beside him and cracked his knuckles.

‘Ezri Delmastro,’ he said, very quietly, ‘I give you the Archon of Tal Verrar.’

He punched Stragos so hard that the Archon’s feet left the gravel. In a moment, he was stuffing the unconscious old man into the burlap sack. Another moment, and the sack was tied off and slung over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.

‘Well, Lyonis,’ said Locke, ‘best of luck with your revolution, or whatever the hell it is. We’re sneaking out of here before things have a chance to get any more interesting on us.’

‘And Stragos—’

‘You’ll never see him again,’ said Locke.

‘Good enough, then. Are you leaving the city?’

‘Not half fast enough for our gods-damned taste.’