Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Oh, just let it out. I don’t care how it looks; it’ll be hidden in the back of my cloak anyway. We can pretty it up later.”

“We?” Jean snorted as he loosened the doublet with a few strategic rips and slashes. “Me, more like. You mend clothes like dogs write poetry.”

“And I readily admit it. Oh, gods, much better. Now there’s room to hide the sigil-wallet and a few surprises, just in case.”

“It feels odd to be letting something out for you, rather than taking it in.” Jean arranged his tools as he’d found them in the sewing chest and closed it back up. “Do mind your training; we wouldn’t want you gaining half a pound.”

“Well, most of me is brain-weight.” Locke folded his own tunic sleeves back and pinned them up as Calo had.

“You’re one-third bad intentions, one-third pure avarice, and one-eighth sawdust. What’s left, I’ll credit, must be brains.”

“Well, since you’re here, and you’re such an expert on my poor self, why don’t you pull out the Masque Box and help me with my face?”

Jean paused for a sip from his brandy glass before pulling out a tall, battered wooden box inset with many dozens of small drawers. “What do we want to do first, your hair? You’re going black, right?”

“As pitch. I should only have to be this fellow two or three times.”

Jean twirled a white cloth around the shoulders of Locke’s doublet and fastened it in front with a tiny bone clasp. He then opened a poultice jar and smeared his fingers with the contents, a firm dark gel that smelled richly of citrus. “Hmm. Looks like charcoal and smells like oranges. I’ll never fathom Jessaline’s sense of humor.”

Locke smiled as Jean began to knead the stuff into his brown hair. “Even a black apothecary needs to stay amused somehow. Remember that beef-scented knockout candle she gave us, to deal with Don Feluccia’s damn guard dog?”

“Very droll, that.” Calo frowned as he made further minute adjustments to his own finery. “Stray cats running from every corner of Camorr at the scent. Dropping in their tracks until the street was full of little bodies. Wind shifting all over the place, and all of us running around trying to stay ahead of the smoke…”

“Not our finest moment,” said Jean. His job was already nearly finished; the stuff seemed to sink into Locke’s hair, imparting a natural-looking shade of deep Camorri black, with only the slightest sheen. But many men in Camorr used slick substances to hold or perfume their hair; this would hardly be noteworthy.

Jean wiped his fingers on Locke’s white neck-towel, then dipped a scrap of cloth into another poultice jar containing a pearly gel. This stuff, when applied to his fingers, cleared the residue of hair dye away as though the black gel were evaporating into thin air. Jean dabbed the cloth at Locke’s temples and neck, erasing the faint smudges and drips left over from the coloring process.

“Scar?” Jean asked when he was finished.

“Please.” Locke ran his little finger across the line of his right cheekbone. “Slash right across there if you would.”

Jean withdrew a slender wooden tube with a chalky white tip from the Masque Box and drew a short line on Locke’s face with it, just as Locke had indicated. Locke flinched as the stuff sizzled for a second or two; in the blink of an eye the white line hardened into a raised, pale arc of pseudo-skin, perfectly mimicking a scar.

Bug appeared through the Wardrobe door at that instant, his cheeks a bit ruddier than usual. In one hand he held a black leather folding wallet, slightly larger than that which a gentleman would ordinarily carry. “Kitchen’s clean. Galdo said you’d forget this if I didn’t bring it in and throw it at you.”

“Please don’t take him literally.” Locke held out a hand for the wallet while Jean removed the white cloth from his shoulders, satisfied that the hair dye was dry. “Break that thing and I’ll roll you to Emberlain in a barrel. Personally.”

The sigil inside the wallet, the intricate confection of gold and crystal and frosted glass, was by far the most expensive prop of the whole game; even the 502 cask of Austershalin had been cheaper. The sigil had been crafted in Talisham, four days’ ride down the coast to the south; no Camorri counterfeiter, regardless of skill, could be trusted to be quiet or comfortable about mimicking the badge of the duke’s own secret police.

A stylized spider over the Royal Seal of the Serene Duchy; none of the Gentlemen Bastards had ever seen one, but Locke was confident that few of the lesser nobility had, either. The rough description of the dreaded sigil was whispered by the Right People of Camorr, and from that description a best-guess forgery had been put together.

“Durant the Gimp says that the Spider’s just bullshit,” said Bug as he handed over the wallet. All three older Gentlemen Bastards in the room looked at him sharply.

“If you put Durant’s brains in a thimble full of water,” said Jean, “they’d look like a ship lost in the middle of the sea.”

“The Midnighters are real , Bug.” Locke patted his hair gingerly and found that his hands came away clean. “If you’re ever found breaching the Peace, you’d better pray the capa gets to you before they do. Barsavi’s the soul of mercy compared to the man that runs the Palace of Patience.”

“I know the Midnighters are real,” said Bug. “I just said, there’s some that say the Spider is bullshit.”

“Oh, he exists. Jean, pick out a moustache for me. Something that goes with this hair.” Locke ran a finger over the smooth skin around his lips, shaved just after dinner. “There’s a man behind the Midnighters. Jean and I have spent years trying to figure out which of the duke’s court it must be, but all the leads go nowhere in the end.”

“Even Galdo and I are stumped,” added Calo. “So you know we’re dealing with a devil of singular subtlety.”

“How can you be sure, though?”

“Let me put it like this, Bug.” Locke paused while Jean held up a false moustache; Locke shook his head and Jean went back to digging in the Masque Box. “When Capa Barsavi does for someone, we hear about it, right? We have connections, and the word gets passed. The capa wants people to know his reasons-it avoids future trouble, makes an example.”

“And when the duke does for someone himself,” said Calo, “there’s always signs. Yellowjackets, Nightglass soldiers, writs, trials, proclamations.”

“But when the Spider puts the finger on someone…” Locke gave a brief nod of approval to the second moustache Jean held up for consideration. “When it’s the Spider, the poor bastard in question falls right off the face of the world. And Capa Barsavi doesn’t say a thing. Do you understand? He pretends that nothing has happened . So when you grasp that Barsavi doesn’t fear the duke…looks down on him quite a bit, actually…well, it follows that there’s someone out there who does make him wet his breeches.”

“Oh. You mean other than the Gray King?”

Calo snorted. “This Gray King mess will be over in a few months, Bug. One lone madman against three thousand knives, all answering to Barsavi-the Gray King is a walking corpse. The Spider isn’t so easily gotten rid of.”

“Which,” said Locke, “is exactly why we’re hoping to see Don Salvara jump six feet in the air when he finds us waiting in his study. Because the blue-bloods are no more comfortable with surprise visits from Midnighters than we are.”

“I hate to interrupt,” said Jean, “but did you shave this time? Ah. Good.” With a small stick, he applied a glistening smear of transparent paste to Locke’s upper lip; Locke wrinkled his nose in disgust. With a few quick finger motions Jean placed the false moustache and pressed it home; in a second or two it was set there as firmly as if it had grown naturally.