Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies

Locke Lamora stood on the pier in Tal Verrar with the hot wind of a burning ship at his back and the cold bite of a loaded crossbow's bolt at his neck.

He grinned and concentrated on holding his own crossbow level with the left eye of his opponent; they were close enough that they would catch most of one another's blood, should they both twitch their fingers at the same time.

"Be reasonable," said the man facing him. Beads of sweat left visible trails as they slid down his grime-covered cheeks and forehead. "Consider the disadvantages of your situation."

Locke snorted. "Unless your eyeballs are made of iron, the disadvantage is mutual. Wouldn't you say so, Jean?"

They were standing two-by-two on the pier, Locke beside Jean, their assailants beside one another. Jean and his foe were toe-to-toe with their crossbows similarly poised; four cold metal bolts were cranked and ready scant inches away from the heads of four understandably nervous men. Not one of them could miss at this range, not if all the gods above or below the heavens willed it otherwise.

"All four of us would appear to be up to our balls in quicksand," said Jean.

On the water behind them, the old galleon groaned and creaked as the roaring flames consumed it from the inside out. Night was made day for hundreds of yards around; the hull was crisscrossed with the white-orange lines of seams coming apart. Smoke boiled out of those hellish cracks in little black eruptions, the last shuddering breaths of a vast wooden beast dying in agony. The four men stood on their pier, strangely alone in the midst of light and noise that were drawing the attention of the entire city.

"Lower your piece, for the love of the gods," said Locke's opponent. "We've been instructed not to kill you if we don't have to."

"And I'm sure you" d be honest if it were otherwise, of course," said Locke. His smile grew. "I make it a point never to trust men with weapons at my windpipe. Sorry." "Your hand will start to shake long before mine does."

"I'll rest the tip of my quarrel against your nose when I get tired. Who sent you after us? What are they paying you? We're not without funds; a happy arrangement could be reached." "Actually," said Jean, "I know who sent them."

"Really?" Locke flicked a glance at Jean before locking eyes with his adversary once again. "And an arrangement has been reached, but I wouldn't call it happy" "Ah… Jean, I'm afraid you" ve lost me."

"No."Jean raised one hand, palm out, to the man opposite him. He then slowly, carefully shifted his aim to his left until his crossbow was pointing at Locke's head. The man he'd previously been threatening blinked in surprise. "You" ve lost me, Locke." "Jean," said Locke, the grin vanishing from his face, "this isn't funny" "I agree. Hand your piece over to me." "Jean—"

"Hand it over now. Smartly. You there, are you some kind of moron? Get that thing out of my face and point it at him."

Jean's former opponent licked his lips nervously, but didn't move. Jean ground his teeth together. "Look, you sponge-witted dock ape, I'm doing your job for you. Point your crossbow at my gods-damned partner so we can get off this pier!"

"Jean, I would describe this turn of events as less than helpful," said Locke, and he looked as though he might say more, except that Jean's opponent chose that moment to take Jean's advice.

It felt to Locke as if sweat was now cascading down his face, as though his own treacherous moisture was abandoning the premises before anything worse happened.

"There. Three on one."Jean spat on the pier. "You gave me no choice but to cut a deal with the employer of these gentlemen before we set out — gods damn it, you forced me. I'm sorry. I thought thed'r make contact before they drew down on us. Now give your weapon over." "Jean, what the hell do you think you're—"

"Don't. Don't say another fucking thing. Don't try to finesse me; I know you too well to let you have your say. Silence, Locke. Finger off the trigger and hand it over."

Locke stared at the steel-tipped point of Jean's quarrel, his mouth open in disbelief. The world around him faded to that tiny, gleaming point, alive with the orange reflection of the inferno blazing in the anchorage behind him. "I can't believe it," said Locke. "I just—"

"This is the last time I'm going to say this, Locke." Jean ground his teeth together and held his aim steady, directly between Locke's eyes. "Take your finger off the trigger and hand over your gods-damned weapon. Right now."

THE GAME WAS CAROUSEL HAZARD, the stakes were roughly half of all the wealth they commanded in the entire world, and the plain truth was that Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen were getting beaten like a pair of dusty carpets.

"Last offering for the fifth hand," said the velvet-coated attendant from his podium on the other side of the circular table. "Do the gentlemen choose to receive new cards?"

"No, no—the gentlemen choose to confer," said Locke, leaning to his left to place his mouth close to Jean's ear. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "What's your hand look like?"

"A parched desert," Jean murmured, casually moving his right hand up to cover his mouth. "How's yours?"

"A wasteland of bitter frustration."

"Shit."

"Have we been neglecting our prayers this week? Did one of us fart in a temple or something?"

"I thought the expectation of losing was all part of the plan."

"It is. I just expected we'd be able to put up a better fight than this ."

The attendant coughed demurely into his left hand, the card-table equivalent of slapping Locke and Jean across the backs of their heads. Locke leaned away from Jean, tapped his cards lightly against the lacquered surface of the table, and grinned the best knew-what-he-was-doing sort of grin he could conjure from his facial arsenal. He sighed inwardly, glancing at the sizable pile of wooden markers that was about to make the short journey from the center of the table to his opponents' stacks.

"We are of course prepared," he said, "to meet our fate with heroic stoicism, worthy of mention by historians and poets."

The dealer nodded. "Ladies and gentlemen both decline last offering. House calls for final hands."

There was a flurry of shuffling and discarding as the four players formed their final hands and set them, facedown, on the table before them.

"Very well," said the attendant. "Turn and reveal."

The sixty or seventy of Tal Verrar's wealthiest idlers who had crowded the room behind them to watch every turn of Locke and Jean's unfolding humiliation now leaned forward as one, eager to see how embarrassed they would be this time.

TAL VERRAR, the Rose of the Gods, at the westernmost edge of what the Therin people call the civilized world.

If you could stand in thin air a thousand yards above Tal Verrar's tallest towers, or float in lazy circles there like the nations of gulls that infest the city's crevices and rooftops, you could see how its vast dark islands have given this place its ancient nickname. They seem to whirl outward from the city's heart, a series of crescents steadily increasing in size, like the stylized petals of a rose in an artist's mosaic.

They are not natural, in the sense that the mainland looming a few miles to the northeast is natural. The mainland cracks before wind and weather, showing its age. The islands of Tal Verrar are unweathered, possibly unweatherable—they are the black glass of the Eldren, unimaginable quantities of it, endlessly tiered and shot through with passages, glazed with layers of stone and dirt from which a city of men and women springs.