The lies of Locke Lamora

The Thiefmaker tried to let a vaguely sincere expression scurry onto his face, where it froze in evident discomfort.

He perfected the use of over-chewed orange pulp as a substitute for vomit; where other teasers would simply clutch their stomachs and moan, Locke would season his performances by spewing a mouthful of warm white and orange slop at the feet of his intended audience (or, if he was in a particularly perverse mood, all over their dress-hems or leggings).

‘I told you they were shit-flinging little monkeys when we made the deal, and it was good enough for you at the—’

His abilty to walk would be miraculously recovered just as soon as he was hauled around a corner.

He’s got larceny in his heart, sure as the sea’s full of fish piss.

The boy mulled this over for a few seconds.

The Thiefmaker tried to let a vaguely sincere expression scurry onto his face, where it froze in evident discomfort.

The Thiefmaker’s wards all carried candles; their cold blue light shone through the silver curtains of river mist as street lamps might glimmer through a smoke-grimed window.

A chain of ghostlight wound its way down from the hilltop, through the stone markers and ceremonial paths, down to the wide glass bridge over the Coalsmoke canal, half-visible in the bloodwarm fog that seeped up from Camorr’s wet bones on summer nights.

‘Come now my loves, my jewels, my newlyfounds, keep the pace,’ whispered the Thiefmaker as he nudged the last of the thirty or so Catchfire orphans over the Coalsmoke bridge.

Eighty-eight thousand souls generated a certain steady volume of waste; this waste included a constant trickle of lost, useless and abandoned children.

Slavers got some of them, to be sure – hauling them off to Tal Verarr or the Jeremite islands, always on the sly.

They spread out among the fallen tables and behind the battered bar, plucking wildly at anything valuable.

Black Whisper meant a miserable death for anyone over the age of eleven or twelve (as near as physikers could figure, for the plague was not content to reap by overly firm rules) and a few days of harmless swollen eyes and red cheeks for anyone younger.

By the eleventh day, when the quarantine was lifted and the Duke’s ghouls went in to survey the mess, perhaps one in eight of the four hundred children previously living there had survived the wait.

The Lamora boy was the youngest and smallest of the lot, five or six years old, nothing but jutting bones under skin rich with dirt and hollow angles.

The Thiefmaker was not unaware of this, but he’d lived the sort of life in which even a single free plague orphan was a windfall not to be overlooked.

The Thiefmaker reached down the front of a doublet that was several years past merely shabby and pulled out a leather pouch on a fine leather cord; the pouch was dyed the rust-red of dried blood.

For an Eyeless Priest, the fingers he jabbed into the Thiefmaker’s sternum struck swift and sure.

‘Find some other lackwit to shackle with the chains of your conscience, you fucking poltroon.’

No profit versus a paltry sum.

Yet over time the balance of power shifted in the families of vault-carvers and morticians and professional pallbearers; fewer and fewer of the quality were interred on Shades’ Hill, as the nearby Hill of Whispers offered more room for larger and gaudier monuments with commensurately higher commissions.

Yet over time the balance of power shifted in the families of vault-carvers and morticians and professional pallbearers; fewer and fewer of the quality were interred on Shades’ Hill, as the nearby Hill of Whispers offered more room for larger and gaudier monuments with commensurately higher commissions.

For his part, he grudgingly began to explain to them some of the tricks of his trade.

In time, the brittle-boned pickpocket became the Thiefmaker; Shades’ Hill became his kingdom.

Down the black mouth of the topmost mausoleum the Catchfire orphans went, down the wood-ribbed tunnel lit by the flickering silver fire of cool alchemical globes, with greasy tendrils of mist chasing at their ankles.

The thick tunnel air was saturated with the smells of night soil and stale bodies—an odor the Catchfire orphans soon multiplied with their own presence.

Savvy?’

Food doesn’t sprout from my arsehole.

‘Your parents must have been misers, to give you nothing but a surname.

Locke moved to stand beside the Thiefmaker where he sat on his high-backed throne; the throng of newcomers rose and milled about until larger, older Shades’ Hill orphans began collaring them and issuing simple instructions.

The Thiefmaker dabbed delicately at these stains with one cuff of his tattered blue coat; the boy didn’t flinch.

Then I gave every man in the squad drink money for five or six nights and we all agreed they would hoist a few to the health of Capa Barsavi, who surely needn’t be, ahhh, troubled by something as inconsequential as his loyal Thiefmaker fucking up and letting a five-year-old breach the bloody Peace.’

If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing.

Night after night the Thiefmaker would parade around the warrens of Shades’ Hill laden down with money-pouches, silk handkerchiefs, necklaces, metal coat-buttons and a dozen other sorts of oddments that were worth clutching.

The Thiefmaker enthusiastically instructed them in the architecture of doublets, waistcoats, frock coats and belt-pouches, keeping up with all the latest fashions as they came off the docks; his wards learned what could be cut away, what could be torn away, and what must be teased out with deft fingers.

The Thiefmaker enthusiastically instructed them in the architecture of doublets, waistcoats, frock coats and belt-pouches, keeping up with all the latest fashions as they came off the docks; his wards learned what could be cut away, what could be torn away, and what must be teased out with deft fingers.

The Thiefmaker mimed a noose going around his neck and let his tongue bulge out past his teeth.

He perfected the use of over-chewed orange pulp as a substitute for vomit; where other teasers would simply clutch their stomachs and moan, Locke would season his performances by spewing a mouthful of warm white and orange slop at the feet of his intended audience (or, if he was in a particularly perverse mood, all over their dress-hems or leggings).

Leaning rows of tenement houses and windowless shops jutted from the tiers of this great seething bowl; wall collapsed against wall and alley folded upon mist-silvered alley so that no level of the Narrows could be traversed by more than two men walking abreast.

The Elderglass Vine crouched over the cobblestones of the road that passed west and crossed, via a stone bridge, from the Narrows into the green depths of the Mara Camorrazza.

It was a sagging three-storey beast of weather-warped wood, with rickety stairs inside and out that maimed at least a patron a week (indeed, there was a lively pool going as to which of the regulars would be the next to crack his skull).

At least, that’s what would have been heard had the bouncer not triggered a headlong exodus from the Elderglass Vine by screaming ‘Whisper!

Tables were overturned, knives and clubs were pulled to prod others into flight, and Gazers were trampled as an undisciplined wave of human detritus surged out every door save that in which Locke stood, pleading uselessly (or so it seemed) to screams and turned backs.

They spread out among the fallen tables and behind the battered bar, plucking wildly at anything valuable.

From the pantry, baskets of coarse but serviceable bread and salted butter in grease-paper, and a dozen bottles of wine.

Again, Locke nodded, doing his best to look rueful.

The true colour of each smooth tower was mingled now with the sinking furnace-light of sunset, and the weblike net of cables and cargo baskets that threaded the tower tops was barely visible against the carmine sky.

The true colour of each smooth tower was mingled now with the sinking furnace-light of sunset, and the weblike net of cables and cargo baskets that threaded the tower tops was barely visible against the carmine sky.

The Duke’s Wind that blew in from the Iron Sea by day had turned; the night, as always, would be ruled by the muggy Hangman’s Wind that blew from land to sea, thick with the scents of farm fields and rotting marshes.

It was an aura, waxing with every passing breath, gaining strength until it bathed the city with the fey half-light of an overcast day.

From the heights of the Five Towers to the obsidian smoothness of the vast glass breakwaters to the artificial reefs beneath the slate-coloured waves, Falselight radiated from every surface and every shard of Elderglass in Camorr, from every speck of the alien material left so long before by the creatures that had first shaped the city.

The eldritch glow of Falselight seemed to inflame the hollow blackness of their staring eyes as they watched men and women hurrying about their business on the squares and avenues of the gods.

Locke marvelled, gaping guilelessly, for he had never seen a stage performance or heard a trained orator.

Heavy steel chains led from these manacles, back up the steps of the temple and through the open doors to the interior; Locke could see that as Father Chains gestured to his listeners, these chains were nearly taut.

But I have no doubt that his time in your affectionate care has instilled those qualities in him by example.’

The last Locke saw of him, he was moving rapidly across the Temple District with his crooked arms and bony shoulders rolling gaily; the strut of a man set free.

It was lit only by the pastel glare of Falselight and the half-hearted efforts of a frosted white alchemical globe, perched precariously in a fixture just above the steel plate that chained the Eyeless Priest to the sanctuary wall.

‘Now,’ said the Eyeless Priest as he knelt, letting a great deal of slack chain gather in little steel mounds about him, ‘come over here, Locke Lamora, and let’s see if you have any of the gifts necessary to become an initiate of this temple.’

Locke recoiled, unsure of what eyeless sockets might look like, but the priest’s eyes were quite normal – in fact, Chains squinted in pain and rubbed them several times, wincing at the glare of the alchemical globe.

Sneering and gesturing rudely as they went, the twins ran for the curtained door and vanished behind it.

‘Makes it much harder to snatch, having it weigh that much,’ Chains said.

Imagine, if you will, that the Twelve happen to have something of a black-sheep younger brother, whose exclusive dominion happens to be thieves like you and I. Though the Twelve won’t allow his name Name to be spoken or heard, they have some lingering affection for his merry brand of fuckery.

As Calo and Galdo will be, some day, and as you might be, provided you’re worth even the pittance I paid for you.’

Locke reached out and plucked the Thiefmaker’s purse (a pouch of rust-red leather) from the piles of copper and passed it to Chains.

Chains grinned, as though he were imparting nothing more than a ribald joke.

If your former master were one shade less greedy than he is vindictive, I don’t doubt you’d be floating in the bay.’