6
DON LORENZO Salvara stepped out of the temple portico into the stark bright dampness of high Camorri noon, little imagining the education a certain boy thief was receiving in the concept of too clever by half just across the district. The trilling of watch-whistles sounded faintly. Salvara narrowed his eyes and peered with some curiosity at the distant figure of a lone city watchman, stumbling across the cobbles and occasionally bouncing off walls, clutching his head as though afraid it was going to float off his neck and up into the sky.
“Can you believe it, m’lord?” Conté had already brought the horses around from the temple’s unobtrusive little stabling grotto. “Drunk as a baby in a beer barrel, and not a heartbeat past noon. Fucking pissant lot of softies, these new goldenrods.” Conté was a sun-wrinkled man of middle years with the waistline of a professional dancer and the arms of a professional oarsman; the manner in which he served the young don was obvious even without a glance at the pair of thigh-length stilettos hanging from his crossed leather belts.
“Hardly up to your old standards, eh?” The don, on the other hand, was a well-favored young man of the classic Camorri blood, black-haired, with skin like shadowed honey. His face was heavy and soft with curves, though his body was slender, and only his eyes gave any hint that he wasn’t a polite young collegium undergraduate masquerading as a noble. Behind his fashionable rimless optics, the don had eyes like an impatient archer hungry for targets. Conté snorted.
“In my day, at least we knew that getting shit-faced was an indoor hobby.” Conté passed the don the reins of his mount, a sleek gray mare little bigger than a pony, well trained but certainly not Gentled. Just the thing for short trots around a city still more friendly to boats (or acrobats, as Do?a Salvara often complained) than to horses. The stumbling watchman vanished around a distant corner, vaguely in the direction of the urgent whistling. As it seemed to be coming no closer, Salvara shrugged inwardly and led his horse out into the street.
Here the day’s second curiosity burst upon them in all of its glory. As the don and his man turned to their right, they gained a full view of the high-walled alley beside the Temple of Fortunate Waters—and in this alley two finely dressed men were clearly getting their lives walloped out of them by a pair of bravos.
Salvara froze and stared in wonder—masked thugs in the Temple District? Masked thugs strangling a man dressed all in black, in the tight, heavy, miserably inappropriate fashion of a Vadran? And, Merciful Twelve, a Gentled packhorse was simply standing there taking it all in.
After a handful of seconds lost to sheer amazement, the don let his own horse’s reins go and ran toward the mouth of the alley. He didn’t need to glance sideways to know that Conté was barely a stride behind him, knives out.
“You!” The don’s voice was reasonably confident, though high with excitement. “Unhand these men and stand clear!”
The closest footpad snapped his head around; his dark eyes widened above his improvised mask when he saw the don and Conté approaching. The thug shifted his red-faced victim so that the man’s body was between himself and the would-be interlopers.
“No need to trouble yourself with this business, my lord,” the footpad said. “Just a bit of a disagreement. Private matter.”
“Then perhaps you should have conducted it somewhere less public.”
The footpad sounded quite exasperated. “What, the duke give you this alley to be your estate? Take another step and I break this poor bastard’s neck.”
“You just do that.” Don Salvara settled his hand suggestively on the pommel of his basket-hilted rapier. “My man and I appear to command the only way out of this alley. I’m sure you’ll still feel quite pleased at having killed that man when you’ve got three feet of steel in your throat.”
The first footpad didn’t release his hold on the coiled loops of rope that were holding up his barely conscious victim, but he began to back off warily toward the dead end, dragging the black-clad man clumsily with him. His fellow thug stood away from the prone form of the man he’d been savagely kicking. A meaningful look flashed between the two masked bandits.
“My friends, do not be stupid.” Salvara slid his rapier halfway out of its scabbard; sunlight blazed white on finest Camorri steel, and Conté crouched forward on the balls of his feet, shifting to the predatory stance of a knife-fighter born and trained.
Without another word, the first footpad flung his victim straight at Conté and the don; while the unfortunate black-clad fellow gasped and clutched at his rescuers, the two masked thugs bolted for the wall at the rear of the alley. Conté sidestepped the heaving, shuddering Vadran and dashed after them, but the assailants were spry as well as cunning. A slim rope hung down the wall, barely visible, and knotted at regular intervals. The two thugs scrambled up this and all but dove over the top of the wall; Conté and his blades were two seconds too late. The weighted far end of the rope flew back over the wall and landed with a splat in the crusted muck at his feet.
“Fucking useless slugabed bastards!” The don’s man slid his stilettos back into his belt with easy familiarity and bent down to the heavyset body lying unmoving in the muck. The eerie white stare of the Gentled packhorse seemed to follow him as he pressed fingers to the fat man’s neck, seeking a pulse. “Watchmen stumbling drunk in broad daylight, and look what happens in the bloody Temple District while they screw around…”
“Oh, thank the Marrows,” choked out the black-clad man as he uncoiled the rope from his neck and flung it to the ground. Don Salvara could now see that his clothes were very fine, despite their spattering of muck and their unseasonable weight—excellently cut, form-tailored, and ornamented with expensive subtlety rather than opulent flash. “Thank the Salt and thank the Sweet. Thank the Hands Beneath the Waters those bastards attacked us right beside this place of power, where the currents brought you to our aid.”
The man’s Therin was precise, though heavily accented, and his voice was unsurprisingly hoarse. He massaged his abraded throat, blinked, and began to pat the muck around him with his free hand, as though looking for something.
“I believe I can help you again,” said Don Salvara in his best Vadran, which was as precise—and as heavily accented—as the stranger’s Therin. Salvara picked a pair of pearl-rimmed optics out of the muck (noting their light weight and sturdy construction—a superior and very expensive pair indeed) and wiped them off on the sleeve of his own loose scarlet coat before handing them to the man.
“And you speak Vadran!” The stranger spoke in that tongue now, with the clipped, excitable diction of Emberlain. He slid the optics back over his eyes and blinked up at his rescuer. “A complete miracle now, far more than I have any right to pray for. Oh! Graumann!”
The black-clad Vadran scrambled unsteadily to his feet and stumbled over to his companion. Conté had managed to roll the portly stranger over in the slime; he now lay on his back with his great muck-slick chest rising and falling steadily.
“He lives, obviously.” Conté slid his hands along the poor fellow’s rib cage and stomach. “I don’t believe he has anything broken or ruptured, though he’ll likely be green with bruises for weeks. Green as pondwater, then black as night, or I don’t know shit from custard tarts.”
The slender, well-dressed Vadran let out a long sigh of relief. “Custard tarts. Indeed. The Marrows are most generous. Graumann is my attendant, my secretary, my diligent right hand. Alas, he has no skill at arms, but then I am myself plainly embarrassed in that regard.” The stranger now spoke Therin again, and he turned to stare at Don Salvara with wide eyes. “Just as plainly I do you discourtesy, for you must be one of the dons of Camorr.” He bowed low—lower even than etiquette would require of a landed foreigner greeting a peer of the Serene Duchy of Camorr, almost until he was in danger of pitching forward on his chin.
“I am Lukas Fehrwight, servant to the House of bel Auster, of the Canton of Emberlain and the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. I am entirely at your service and grateful beyond words for what you have done for me today.”
“I am Lorenzo, Don Salvara, and this is my man Conté, and it is we who are entirely at your service, without obligation.” The don bowed at exactly the correct angle, with his right hand held out as an invitation to shake. “I am in a sense responsible for Camorr’s hospitality, and what befell you here was not hospitality. It was upon my honor to come to your aid.”
Fehrwight grasped the don’s proffered arm just above the wrist and shook. If Fehrwight’s grasp was weak, the don was willing to charitably ascribe it to his near strangling. Fehrwight then lowered his own forehead until it gently touched the back of the don’s hand, and their physical courtesies were settled. “I beg to differ; you have here a sworn man, quite competent by his looks. You could have satisfied honor by sending him to our aid, yet you came yourself, ready to fight. From where I stood, it seemed he ran to keep up with you. And I assure you, my viewpoint for this affair was uncomfortable but excellent.”
The don waved his hand gently as though words could be swatted out of the air. “I’m just sorry they got away, Master Fehrwight. It is unlikely that I can give you true justice. For that, Camorr again apologizes.”
Fehrwight knelt down beside Graumann and brushed the big man’s sweat-slick dark hair back from his forehead. “Justice? I am lucky to be alive. I was blessed with a safe journey here and with your aid. I am alive to continue my mission, and that is justice enough.” The slender man looked up at Salvara again. “Are you not Don Salvara of the Nacozza Vineyards? Is not the Do?a Sofia, the famous botanical alchemist, your wife?”
“I have that honor, and I have that pleasure,” said the don. “And do you not serve the House of bel Auster? Do you not deal with the, ah…”
“Yes, oh yes, I serve that House of bel Auster; my business is the sale and transport of the substance you’re thinking of. It is curious, so very curious. The Marrows toy with me; the Hands Beneath must wish me to drop dead of sheer wonder. That you should save my life here, that you should speak Vadran, that we should share a common business interest…It is uncanny.”
“I, too, find it extraordinary, but hardly displeasing.” Don Salvara gazed around the alley thoughtfully. “My mother was Vadran, which is why I speak the language enthusiastically, if poorly. Were you followed here? That rope over the wall bespeaks preparation, and the Temple District…Well, it’s usually as safe as the duke’s own reading room.”
“We arrived this morning,” said Fehrwight. “After we secured our rooms—at the Inn of the Tumblehome, you know of it, I’m sure—we came straight here to give thanks and drown the offerings for our safe passage from Emberlain. I did not see where those men came from.” Fehrwight mused for a moment. “Though I believe that one of them threw that rope over the wall after knocking Graumann down. They were cautious, but not waiting in ambush for us.”
Salvara grunted, and turned his attention to the blank stare of the Gentled horse. “Curious. Do you always bring horses and goods to the temple to make your offerings? If those packs are as full as they look, I can see why thugs might have been tempted.”
“Ordinarily, such things would be under lock and key at our inn.” Fehrwight gave Graumann two friendly pats on the shoulder and rose again. “But for this cargo, and for this mission, I must keep them with me at all times. And I fear that must have made us a tempting target. It is a conundrum.” Fehrwight scratched his chin slowly, several times. “I am in your debt already, Don Lorenzo, and hesitant to ask aid of you once again. Yet this relates to the mission I am charged with, for my time in Camorr. As you are a don, do you know of a certain Don Jacobo?”
Don Salvara’s eyes fixed firmly on Fehrwight; one corner of his mouth turned infinitesimally downward. “Yes,” he said, and nothing more, after the silence had stretched a few moments.
“This Don Jacobo…It is said that he is a man of wealth. Extreme wealth, even for a don.”
“That is…true.”
“It is said that he is adventurous. Bold, even. That he has—how do you say it?—an eye for strange opportunities. A toleration of risk.”
“That is one way of describing his character, perhaps.”