The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

embankment, drawing canal water up into a network of troughs and viaducts that crisscrossed over the Fauria’s streets at every level.
    Bug slid the barge over to a rickety quay just beneath the catbridge; from the faint and slender shadow of this arch a man jumped down to the quay, dressed (as Bug and Jean were) in oil-stained leather breeches and a rough cotton shirt. His next nonchalant leap took him into the barge, which barely rocked at his arrival.
    “Salutations to you, Master Jean Tannen, and profuse congratulations on the fortuitous timing of your arrival!” said the newcomer.
    “Ah, well, felicitations to you in respect of the superlative grace of your entry into our very humble boat, Master Lamora.” Jean punctuated this statement by popping the remains of his apple into his mouth, stem and all, and producing a wet crunching noise.
    “Creeping shits, man.” Locke Lamora stuck out his tongue. “Must you do that? You know the black alchemists make fish poison from the seeds of those damn things.”
    “Lucky me,” said Jean after swallowing the last bit of masticated pulp, “not being a fish.”
    Locke was a medium man in every respect—medium height, medium build, medium-dark hair cropped short above a face that was neither handsome nor memorable. He looked like a proper Therin, though perhaps a bit less olive and ruddy than Jean or Bug; in another light he might have passed for a very tan Vadran. His bright gray eyes alone had any sense of distinction; he was a man the gods might have shaped deliberately to be overlooked. He settled down against the left-hand gunwale and crossed his legs.
    “Hello to you as well, Bug! I knew we could count on you to take pity on your elders and let them rest in the sun while you do the hard work with the pole.”
    “Jean’s a lazy old bastard is what it is,” Bug said. “And if I don’t pole the barge, he’ll knock my teeth out the back of my head.”
    “Jean is the gentlest soul in Camorr, and you wound him with your accusations,” said Locke. “Now he’ll be up all night crying.”
    “I would have been up all night anyway,” Jean added, “crying from the ache of rheumatism and lighting candles to ward off evil vapors.”
    “Which is not to say that our bones don’t creak by day, my cruel apprentice.” Locke massaged his kneecaps. “We’re at least twice your age—which is prodigious for our profession.”
    “The Daughters of Aza Guilla have tried to perform a corpse-blessing on me six times this week,” said Jean. “You’re lucky Locke and I are still spry enough to take you with us when we run a game.”
    To anyone beyond hearing range, Locke and Jean and Bug might have looked like the crew of a for-hire barge, slacking their way toward a cargo pickup at the junction of the Via Camorrazza and the Angevine River. As Bug poled them closer and closer to the Shifting Market, the water was getting thicker with such barges, and with sleek black cockleshell boats, and battered watercraft of every description, not all of them doing a good job of staying afloat or under control.
    “Speaking of our game,” said Locke, “how is our eager young apprentice’s understanding of his place in the scheme of things?”
    “I’ve been reciting it to Jean all morning,” said Bug.
    “And the conclusion is?”
    “I’ve got it down cold!” Bug heaved at the pole with all of his strength, driving them between a pair of high-walled floating gardens with inches to spare on either side. The scents of jasmine and oranges drifted down over them as their barge slipped beneath the protruding branches of one of the gardens; a wary attendant peeked over one garden-boat’s wall, staff in hand to fend them off if necessary. The big barges were probably hauling transplants to some noble’s orchard upriver.
    “Down cold, and I won’t screw it up. I promise! I know my place, and I know the signals. I won’t screw it up!”

    3

    CALO WAS shaking Locke with real vigor,