Chains hadn’t needed to explain why Locke was expected to scrabble together a purse from this drudgery; as a Gentleman Bastard, his activities paid into the sum that was kicked up to the Capa each week, and the mere fact that he was over here for a few months wouldn’t take his portion off his shoulders. What truly vexed him that night, going round and round in his head as he wiped counters and filled cups and mopped up after people who seemed to like spilling as much as they liked swallowing, was the question of using his skills to get back what he’d lost.
There were a hundred ways, using all the schemes and guiles Chains had taught him, to pull eight solons from fools in half a day. Though perhaps that was a frustrated exaggeration — a couple dozen, perhaps. Well, seven or eight, maybe. But they were seven or eight smooth-practiced schemes that weren’t merely waiting for Botari to set coins in his hand with all the speed and willingness of a mule doing geometry problems. Yet Chains had specifically forbidden him from using those arts.
The night went on. Locke wiped and poured and carried. His own damn fault, this was, for loving the old man enough to obey him even when it meant toil. Tending a conscience was a form of toil, he supposed. He’d tended it for the years it had taken to pay off the careless deaths represented by the shark’s tooth tucked into the little pouch he wore on a cord beneath his tunic. It felt good to brood on such thoughts as he worked. Locke had deep feelings about nearly everything but had not yet aged into the realization that brooding was just about his only means of interacting with those feelings.
The moons were high and lighting his way with soft silver-blue by the time he carried the last of the night’s dross into the alley. A fresh corpse sprawled there, not Szaba’s. Nor was there anything of value on the man’s body. Locke sighed, hunched with weariness, and went back inside to find Cyril and Vilius.
“But where do we go, hmm? And what do we ask for? For good young lads of, ah, negotiable affection? Can you at least be that much of a friend?”
The three men at the counter were sturdy, bearded, red-faced. Merchants of some sort not from Camorr proper, but up or down the coast. Locke knew the type. Their notions of prosperity armored them in smugness. They were after a little thrill in the wrong parts of the big city, having no idea of the scope or shape of Right People operations, and no idea how easy it was for someone to make a red breakfast for sharks and never be missed. It was two nights after Mazoc Szaba’s humiliation.
“To be a friend,” said Locke, “I’d tell you to get smartly out of here, and go west by north, back to where there’s more Yellowjackets on the streets. Back to the sort of inn or tavern you’d want for your own sort of business. Ask around there, keep your voices down. Folk will know how to direct you. Say you’re looking for miners.”
“But we don’t want to dig in the earth,” chuckled the most talkative of the three. “We want to get fobbed. We want the sweet ache sucked out of us, you ken?
“Miners. It’s cant. They’re called miners because they use their tools to find metal, get it? Say you’re after copper miners if your purses are light, silver miners if you can afford it.”
“Well, what about you, boy? If we didn’t want to stroll for our pleasure, how’d you like to do a bit of mining somewhere quiet nearby?”
Locke wasn’t offended or frightened, but he was exasperated. Nobody thought they were bigger than little merchants who did a bit of traveling. Nobody was more certain that all the features and curiosities of the world were set out for their convenience.
“Not my line,” he said, “and you can’t ask that here. There’s ways of doing things and places to do them, lots of places. But this business is closely minded.” He wasn’t going to spend all night explaining the Guilded Lilies or the Passing Fancies to these strangers, or that those gangs didn’t take kindly to freelance fuck-mongering.
“You’re telling us you don’t know a good place to hide around here?”
“The boy’s telling you he’s not interested.” Mazoc Szaba set one hand on the bar. “Get gone, you slack-witted palliards. He told you how to find your fun. Go find it somewhere better-lit and stay in those districts.”
The talkative merchant looked as though he might snap back, but Locke saw the fight go out of him as he assessed Szaba. There was something grim and assured about the old mercenary tonight. His eyes were fierce, there was a fresh cut across one of his cheeks, and the straight lines of a scabbard were obvious beneath his jacket. Perhaps that was why nobody had mocked or otherwise remarked upon him as he’d slipped into the Unbroken Jar.
Hands up, eyes wide, the three merchants backed out the door and into the night.
