The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch Read Free Book Online Page A

another push against the gentle current of
     the seaward-flowing canal. “You and Locke and Calo and Galdo are down in the alley
     between Fortunate Waters and the gardens for the Temple of Nara, right? I’m up on
     the roof of the temple across the way.”
    “Go on,” Jean said around a mouthful of marsh apple. “Where’s Don Salvara?”
    Other barges, heavily laden with everything from ale casks to bleating cows, were
     slipping past the two of them on the clay-colored water of the canal. Bug was poling
     them north along Camorr’s main commercial waterway, the Via Camorrazza, toward the
     Shifting Market, and the city was lurching into life around them.
    The leaning gray tenements of water-slick stone were spitting their inhabitants out
     into the sunlight and the rising summer warmth. The month was Parthis, meaning that
     the night-sweat of condensation already boiling off the buildings as a soupy mist
     would be greatly missed by the cloudless white heat of early afternoon.
    “He’s coming out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters, like he does every Penance Day
     right around noon. He’s got two horses and one man with him, if we’re lucky.”
    “A curious ritual,” Jean said. “Why would he do a thing like that?”
    “Deathbed promise to his mother.” Bug drove his pole down into the canal, struggled
     against it for a moment, and managed to shove them along once more. “She kept the
     Vadran religion after she married the old Don Salvara. So he leaves an offering at
     the Vadran temple once a week and gets home as fast as he can so nobody pays too much
     attention to him. Dammit, Jean, I already know this shit. Why would I be here if you
     didn’t trust me? And why am
I
the one who gets to push this stupid barge all the way to the market?”
    “Oh, you can stop poling the barge any time you can beat me hand to hand three falls
     out of five.” Jean grinned, showing two rows of crooked brawler’s teeth in a face
     that looked as though someone had set it on an anvil and tried to pound it into a
     more pleasing shape. “Besides, you’re an apprentice in a proud trade, learning under
     the finest and most demanding masters it has to offer. Getting all the shit-work is
     excellent for your moral education.”
    “You haven’t given me any bloody moral education.”
    “Yes. Well, that’s probably because Locke and I have been dodging our own for most
     of our lives now. As for why we’re going over the plan again, let me remind you that
     one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison
     to what we’ll get.”
    Jean pointed at one of the city’s slop wagons, halted on a canal-side boulevard to
     receive a long dark stream of night soil from the upper window of a public alehouse.
     These wagons were crewed by petty criminals whose offenses were too meager to justify
     continual incarceration in the Palace of Patience. Shackled to their wagons and huddled
     in the alleged protection of long leather ponchos, they were let out each morning
     to enjoy what sun they could when they weren’t cursing the dubious accuracy with which
     several thousand Camorri emptied their chamber pots.
    “I won’t screw it up, Jean.” Bug shook his thoughts like an empty coin purse, searching
     desperately for something to say that would make him sound as calm and assured as
     he imagined Jean and all the older Gentlemen Bastards always were—but the mouth of
     most twelve-year-olds far outpaces the mind. “I just won’t, I bloody
won’t
, I promise.”
    “Good lad,” Jean said. “Glad to hear it. But just
what
is it that you won’t screw up?”
    Bug sighed. “I make the signal when Salvara’s on his way out of the Temple of Fortunate
     Waters. I keep an eye out for anyone else trying to walk past the alley, especially
     the city watch. If anybody tries it, I jump down from the temple roof with a longsword
     and cut their bloody heads off where they stand.”
    “You