Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2)

by Scott Lynch

I’m a threat to you every moment I’m around you.” “I don’t bloody well care that they know your name! Are you mad?” “No, but you’re still drunk, and you’re not thinking straight.” “I certainly am! Do you want to leave?” “No! Gods, no, of course not! But I’m—” “Shutting up right this second if you know what’s good for you.” “You need to understand that you’re in danger!” “Of course I’m in danger. I’m mortal. Jean, gods love you, I will not fucking send you away, and I will not let you send yourself away! We lost Calo, Galdo, and Bug. If I send you away, I lose the last friend I have in the world. Who wins then, Jean? Who’s protected then?”

“And I miss them,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Gods, I miss them. It’s my fault they’re dead. I can’t … I can’t stand it.…” “Don’t you dare,” growled Jean. He shoved Locke in the chest, forcefully. Locke fell backward across his bed and hit the wall of the room hard enough to rattle the window shutters. “Don’t you dare use them as an excuse for what you’re doing to yourself! Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Hey, Jean, Jean, you can’t—that’s mine!” “Used to be ‘ours,’ ” said Jean coldly. “I liked that better.”

“You snake-souled, dirty-minded son of a bitch! I hope a shark tries to suck your cock!”

“Ha! What do you say to that, hmmm?” “I say it was bloody child’s play. Doesn’t mean a gods-damned thing.” “Child’s play? Die screaming, Jean,

‘Difficult’ and ‘impossible’ are cousins often mistaken for one another, with very little in common.”

Gods, when did we discover how easy it is to be cruel to one another?”

I was so wrapped up in what I’d lost, I forgot what I still had. I’m glad you still worry enough about me to kick my ass when I need it.”

I want it to be us against the world, lively and dangerous, just like it used to be.

“You’re not just greedy. You two have an unhealthy lust for excitement. The contemplation of long odds must positively get you drunk. Or else why choose the life you have, when you could have obviously succeeded as thieves of a more mundane stripe,

You’re a lever and a fulcrum, you two, looking for a city to turn upside down.”

“I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this—” “Get accustomed to it,” snapped Locke, rising out of his chair and beginning to dust off his coat. “I have a counterproposal, one I urge you to entertain quite seriously.” “Oh?” “Forget about this, Stragos.” Locke drew on his coat, shook his shoulders to settle it properly, and gripped it by the lapels. “Forget about this whole ridiculous scheme. Give us enough antidote, if there is one, to settle us for the time being. Or let us know what it is and we’ll have our own alchemist see to it, with our own funds. Send us back to Requin, for whom you profess no love, and let us get on with robbing him. Bother us no further, and we’ll return the favor.”

“My dear Lamora,” laughed Stragos with a soft, dry sound like an echo inside a coffin, “your bluster may be sufficient to convince some sponge-spined Camorri mongrel don to hand over his coin purse. It might even be enough to see you through the task I have in mind. But you’re mine now, and the Bondsmagi were rather clear on how you might be humbled.”

“So be it,” said Locke. “But I want you to remember.” “Remember what?” “That I offered to let this go,” said Locke. “That I offered to simply walk away.”

“Hell,” said Jean. “I’m sorry,” muttered Locke. “I was so keen to come to Tal fucking Verrar.” “It’s not your fault. We were both eager to hop in bed with the wench; it’s just shit luck she turned out to have the clap.”

“After that, we can add one more small item to our agenda for this Tal Verrar holiday of ours.” “Kick the archon in the teeth?” “Gods yes,” said Locke, smacking a fist into an open palm. “Whether or not we finish the Requin job first. Whether or not there really is a poison! I’m going to take his whole bloody palace and shove it so far up his ass he’ll have stone towers for tonsils!”

In the west, the poor clung to spots in the Portable Quarter, where those willing to tolerate constant rearrangement of all their belongings by hard sea-weather could at least live free of rent.

The dead were as strictly sifted in death as they’d been in life, with each successive tier claiming a better class of corpse. It was a morbid mirror of the Golden Steps across the bay.

In Tal Verrar those convicted of capital crimes simply vanished, along with most of the city’s garbage, into the Midden Deep. This was an open square pit, forty feet on a side, located to the north of the Midden of Souls. Its Elderglass walls plunged into absolute darkness, giving no hint as to how far down they truly went. Popular lore held that it was bottomless, and criminals prodded off the execution planks usually went screaming and pleading. The worst rumor about the place, of course, was that those thrown down into the Deep did not die … but somehow continued falling. Forever.

“You talk the way you perform card tricks, Master Kosta. Far too smoothly. I fear you may be even better at hiding things with words than you are with your hands.

“I used to think much less of him, you know. Before I found out that he was wise enough to really love you.”

“Has anyone ever tried to cut out that disgustingly silver tongue of yours, Master Kosta?” “It’s become a traditional pastime in several cities I could mention.”

Nara, Mistress of Ubiquitous Maladies, may Her hand be stayed, sends disease among men so that men will never forget that they are not gods. We’re sort of like that, for the rich and powerful. We’re the stone in their shoe, the thorn in their side, a little bit of reciprocity this side of divine judgment.

“Here they can behave however they choose. At the Amusement War they can do exactly what they want to do to the poor folk and the simple folk. Things forbidden elsewhere. All you’re seeing is what they look like when they stop pretending they give a damn about anything.

Please don’t kill me, sir!” “Why the fuck not?” Locke groaned,

I want you to use your misplaced acorn of a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again.

“Hush now, sweet moron.

Caldris led them over to a large covered basket that sat on the stones near the docked dinghy. He undid the cover, reached in, and removed a live kitten. “Hello, you monstrous little necessity.” “Mrrrrwwwwww,” said the monstrous little necessity.

Until further notice, we’re gonna presume that you’re too dumb to count to one.”

“You should make a little list, Kosta, titled People It’s Safe for Me to Antagonize. My name will not appear on it.”

“Maybe I’ll just hold fast after this bottle,” said Locke. “Hold fast is a nautical—” “I know,” said Locke. “I’ll kill myself later.”

there’s places no sensible ship’s master will ever go. Places that are … wrong, somehow. Places that wait for you.”

“This sort of thing rarely goes just one way.”

“That means me as well,” said Jean, placing a hand on Locke’s shoulder, somewhat protectively. “I go where he goes.”

He should have died a few seconds later. It was Jean, as usual, who had other plans.

Locke glanced around frantically and sighed when he saw Jean, apparently untouched, crouched near the starboard rail. Lieutenant Delmastro was at his feet, her hair unbound, blood running down her right arm. As Locke watched, Jean tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of his own tunic and began binding one of her wounds. Locke felt a pang that was half relief and half melancholy; usually it was him that Jean was picking up in bloody pieces at the end of a fight. Ducking away from Jean had been a matter of split-second necessity in the heat of the struggle. He realized that he was strangely disquieted that Jean hadn’t followed him, relentlessly at his heels, looking after him as always.

We carry your precious misery with us like a holy fucking relic. Don’t talk about Sabetha Belacoros. Don’t talk about the plays. Don’t talk about Jasmer, or Espara, or any of the schemes we ran. I lived with her for nine years, same as you, and I’ve pretended she doesn’t fucking exist to avoid upsetting you. Well, I’m not you. I’m not content to live like an oath-bound monk. I have a life outside your gods-damned shadow.”

‘Woman, your heart is a mapless maze. Could I bottle confusion and drink it a thousand years, I could not confound myself so much as you do between waking and breakfast. You are grown so devious that serpents would applaud your passage, would the gods but give them hands.’ ”

anyone in command feigns ease when death is near. We do it for those around us, and we do it for ourselves. We do it because the sole alternative is to die cringing. The difference between an experienced leader and an untested one is that only the untested one is shocked at how well they can pretend when their hand is forced.”

They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to each other.

It had the expression common to all kittens, that of a tyrant in the becoming. I was comfortable, and you dared to move, those jade eyes said. For that you must die. When it became apparent to the cat that its two or three pounds of mass were insufficient to break Locke’s neck with one mighty snap, it put its paws on his shoulders and began sharing its drool-covered nose with his lips.

“Lads? I didn’t know you, ah, stalked that particular quarry.” “Yeah, well, seems I’ll try anything once.” Jabril grinned. “Or five or six times, as it turns out.”

“You sure you’re authorized to give orders to that cat?”

“I’m sorry,” said Jean. “No, that’s my job.” “I meant … we really found our jagged edges again, didn’t we?”

“Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend.”

“It’s Drakasha, isn’t it?” “It is. Who are you?” “Banjital Vo.” “Well,” said Drakasha, “Banjital Vo, I’m making you responsible for the safety of the boat we just tied up.” “But … I—” “If it’s here when we come back, I’ll give you a Verrari silver. If anything’s happened to it, I’ll ask around for you, and when I find you I’ll pull your gods-damned eyes out.” “I’ll … I’ll keep it like it were my own.” “No,” said Drakasha, “keep it like it’s mine.”

“You’re not hearing me, Chay. I really don’t care what sort of dog gnaws bones at my place when I’m gone,” said Drakasha, “but when I come back I expect her to crawl under the table where she belongs.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?” he shouted. “Orrin Ravelle,” said Locke. “Never fucking heard of you.” “I think you’ll remember me, though.”

Rance reared back to spit blood in Drakasha’s face, but the older captain’s slap was faster, and the blood spewed out across the stairs. “Two things,” said Zamira. “First, I’m calling the council for tomorrow. I’ll expect to see you there at the usual place and time. Nod your silly head.” Rance nodded, slowly. “Second, I don’t have brats. I have a daughter and a son. And if you ever forget that again, I’ll carve your fucking bones into toys for them.”

‘Let us speak behind our hands, lest our lips be read as the book of our designs, and let us find some place where only gods and rats may hear our words aloud.’ ”