'Of course,' said Locke. 'I beg your pardon, madam, if I'm a bit out of sorts. I hope you can appreciate our situation ... possibly poisoned, with no means to tell in the first place, let alone begin securing an antidote.'
'Yes, Master Kosta. It's certainly an anxious position you're in.'
'This is the second time I've been poisoned for coercive purposes. I was lucky enough to escape the first.'
'Pity it's such an effective means of keeping someone on a chain, isn't it?'
'You needn't sound so satisfied, madam.'
'Oh, come now, Master Kosta. You mustn't think me unsympathetic' Pale Therese held up her left hand, showing off a collection of rings and alchemical scars, and Locke was surprised to see that the fourth finger of that hand was missing. 'A careless accident, when I was an apprentice, working with something unforgiving. I had ten heartbeats to choose - my finger or my life. Fortunately there was a heavy knife very close at hand. I know what it means to taste the fruits of my art,
gentlemen. I know what it is to feel sickly and anxious and desperate, waiting to see what happens next.'
'Of course,' said Jean. 'Forgive my partner. It's just ... well, the artistry of our apparent poisoning surely left us hoping for some equally miraculous solution.'
'As a rule of thumb, it's always easier to poison than it is to cure.' Therese idly rubbed the stump of her missing finger, a gesture that looked like an old, familiar tic. 'Antidotes are delicate things; in many cases, they're poisons in their own right. There is no panacea, no cure-all, no cleansing draught that can blunt every venom known to my trade. And since the substance you describe does indeed appear to be proprietary, I'd sooner just cut your throats than attempt random antidote treatments. They could prolong your misery, or even enhance the effect of the substance already within you.'
Jean cupped his chin in one hand and gazed around the parlour. Therese had decorated one wall with a shrine to fat, sly Gandolo, Lord of Coin and Commerce, heavenly father of business transactions. On the opposite wall was a shrine to veiled Aza Guilla, Lady of the Long Silence, Goddess of Death. 'But you said there are known substances that linger on like the one we're supposed to be afflicted with. Might they not narrow the field of worthwhile treatments?'
'There are such substances, yes. Twilight Rose essence sleeps in the body for several months and deadens the nerves if the subject doesn't take a regular antidote. Witherwhite steals the nourishment from all food and drink; the victim can gorge themselves all they like and still waste away to nothing. Anuella dust makes the victim bleed out through their skin weeks after they inhale it... but don't you see the problem? Three lingering poisons, three very different means of causing harm. An antidote for, say, a poison of the blood might well kill you if your poison works by some other means.'
'Damn,' said Locke. 'All right, then. I feel silly bringing this up, but ... Jerome, you said there was one more possibility?
'Bezoars,' said Jean. 'I read a great deal about them as a child.'
'Bezoars are, sadly, a myth.' Therese folded her hands in front of her and sighed. 'Just a fairy story, like the Ten Honest Turncoats, the Heart-Eating Sword, the Clarion Horn of Therim Pel and all that wonderful nonsense. I'm sure I read the same books, Master de Ferra. I'm sorry. In order to extract magic stones from the stomachs of dragons, we'd have to have living dragons somewhere, wouldn't we?'
'They do seem to be in short supply.'
'If it's miraculous and expensive you're looking for,' said Therese, 'there is one more course of action I could suggest.'
'Anything ...' said Locke.
'The Bondsmagi of Karthain. I have credible reports that they do have means to halt poisonings that we alchemists cannot. For those who can afford their fees, of course.'
'... Except that,' muttered Locke.
'Well,' said Therese with a certain resigned finality. 'Though it aids neither my purse nor my conscience to set you back on the street without a solution, I fear I can do little else, given how thin our information is. You are absolutely confident the poisoning happened but recently?'
'Last night, madam, was the very first opportunity our... tormentor ever had.'
'Then take what little comfort I can give. Stay useful to this individual and you probably have weeks or months of safety ahead. In that time, some lucky stroke may bring you more information on the substance in question. Watch and listen keenly for whatever clues you may. Return with more solid information for me and I will instruct my people to take you in at any hour, night or day, to see what I might do.'
'That's quite gracious of you, madam,' said Locke.
'Poor gentlemen! I offer you my best prayers for good fortune. I know you shall five for some time with a weight on your shoulders ... and should you eventually find no solution forthcoming, I can always offer you my other services. Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.'
'You're our kind of businesswoman,' said Jean, rising to his feet. He set down his little cup of coffee and beside it placed a gold solari coin. 'We appreciate your time and hospitality'
'No trouble, Master de Ferra. Are you ready to go out, then?'
Locke stood up and adjusted his long coat. He and Jean nodded in unison.
'Very well, then. Valista will see you back out the way you came. Apologies once again for the blindfolds, but... some precautions are for your benefit as well as mine.'
The actual location of Pale Therese's parlour was a secret, tucked away somewhere among the hundreds of respectable businesses, coffee houses, taverns and homes in the wooden warrens of the Emerald Galleries, where sunlight and moonlight alike filtered down a soothing
-.1.,
sea-green through the mushrooming, intersecting Elderglass domes that roofed the district. Therese's guards led prospective clients to her, blindfolded, along a lengthy series of passageways. The armed young woman stood away from the door, a pair of blindfolds in hand.
'We understand completely,' said Locke. 'And never fear. We're becoming quite accustomed to being led around by our noses in the dark.'
2
Locke and Jean skulked about the Savrola for two nights after that, keeping their eyes on every rooftop and every alley, but neither Bondsmagi nor agents of the Archon came forward and conveniently announced themselves. They were being followed and observed by several teams of men and women, that much was clear. Locke's guess was that these were Requin's people, given instructions to let just enough of their activities slip to keep him and Jean on their toes.
On the third night, they decided they might as well return to the Sinspire and put on their brave faces. Decked out in several hundred solari-worth of finery apiece, they walked up the red velvet carpet and placed silver volani in the hands of the door-guards, while a sizeable crowd of well-dressed nobodies stood nearby hoping for a glimmer of social mercy.
Locke's practised eye picked out the ringers among them: men and women with worse teeth, leaner faces and warier eyes than the rest of the crowd, dressed in evening clothes that didn't look precisely tailored, or wearing the wrong accessories, or the wrong colours. Requin's Right People, out for a night at his Sinspire as a reward for some job well done. They'd be let in in good time, but not allowed past the second floor, to be sure. Their presence was just one more component of the tower's mystique: a chance for the great and good to mingle with the dirty and dangerous.
'Masters Kosta and de Ferra,' said one of the doormen, 'welcome back.'
When the wide doors swung open toward Locke and Jean, a wave of noise and heat and smells washed out over them into the night - the familiar exhalation of decadence.
The first floor was merely crowded, but the second floor was a wall-to-wall sea of flesh and fine clothes. The crowd began on the stairs,
and Locke and Jean had to use elbows and threats to make their way up into the mess.
'What in Perelandro's name is going on?' Locke asked of a man pressed against him. The man turned, grinning excitedly.
'It's a cage spectacle!'
In the centre of the second floor was a brass cage that could be lowered from the ceiling, locking into apertures in the floor to create a sturdy cube about twenty feet on a side. Tonight the cage was also covered with a very fine mesh - no, Locke corrected himself, two layers of mesh, one inside the cage and one outside. A lucky minority of the Sinspire patrons in the room were watching from elevated tables along the outer walls; it was standing-room only for at least a hundred others.
Locke and Jean made their way through the crowd anticlockwise, attempting to get close enough to see what the spectacle was. The excited murmur of conversation surrounded them, more frantic than Locke had ever heard it within these walls. But as he and Jean approached the cage, he suddenly realized that not all of the noise was coming from the crowd.
Something the size of a sparrow beat its wings against the mesh and buzzed angrily, a low thrumming sound that sent a shiver of pure animal dread up Locke's spine. 'That's a fucking stiletto wasp,' he whispered to Jean, who nodded vigorously in agreement.
Locke had never been unfortunate enough to encounter one of the insects personally. They were the bane of several large tropical islands a few thousand miles to the east, far past Jerem and Jeresh and the lands detailed on most Therin maps. Years before, Jean had found a gruesome account of the creatures in one of his natural philosophy books and read it aloud to the other Gentlemen Bastards, ruining their sleep for several nights.
They were called stiletto wasps on account of descriptions the rare survivors gave of being stung by them. They were as heavy as songbirds, bright red in colour, and their stinging abdomens were longer than a grown man's middle finger. Possession of a stiletto wasp queen in any Therin city-state was punishable by death, lest the things should ever gain a foothold on Therin soil. Their hives were said to be the size of houses.
A young man ducked and wove inside the cage, dressed in nothing more protective than a silk tunic, cotton breeches and short boots. Thick leather gauntlets were his weapons as well as his only armour;
they were wedded to bracers buckled around his forearms, and he kept his hands up before his face like a boxer. With gloves like that a man could certainly contemplate swatting or crushing a stiletto wasp - but he would have to be very quick and very sure of himself.
On a table at the opposite side of the cage sat a heavy wooden cabinet, fronted with dozens of mesh-covered cells, a few of which were already open. The rest, judging by the noise, were crammed full of highly agitated stiletto wasps just waiting to be released.
'Master Kosta! Master de Ferra!'
The shout carried across the noisy crowd but even so was hard to pinpoint. Locke had to look around several times before he could spot the source - Maracosa Durenna, waving to him and Jean from her place at one of the tables against a far wall.
Her black hair was pulled back into a sort of fan-tail around a gleaming silver ornament, and she was smoking from a curved silver pipe almost as long as her arm. Bands of white iron and jade slid against one another on her left wrist as she beckoned Locke and Jean across the room. They raised eyebrows at each other but pushed their way through the crowd toward her, and were soon standing beside her table.
'Where have you been these past few nights? Izmila has been indisposed, but I've been cruising the waters with other games in mind.'
'Our apologies, Madam Durenna,' said Jean. 'Matters of business have kept us elsewhere. We occasionally consult on a freelance basis for very ... demanding clients.'
'There was a brief trip over water,' added Locke.
'Negotiations concerning futures in pear cider,' said Jean.
'We came highly recommended by former associates,' said Locke.
'Pear cider futures? What a romantic and dangerous sort of trade you two must ply. And are you as accomplished at stake-placing in futures as you are at Carousel Hazard?'
'It stands to reason,' said Jean, 'or else we wouldn't have the funds to play Carousel Hazard.'
'Well then, how about a demonstration? The cage duel. Which participant do you believe to have a happier prospect for the future?'
In the cage, the free stiletto wasp darted toward the young man, who swatted it out of the air and crushed it beneath one of his boots with an audible juicy crack. Most of the crowd cheered.
'Apparently, it's too late for our opinion to matter one way or the other,' said Locke. 'Or is there more to the show?'
'The show's only just started, Master Kosta. That hive has one hundred and twenty cells. There's a clockwork device opening the doors, mostly at random. He might get one at a time, he might get six. Eye-catching, isn't it? He can't leave the cage until he's got one hundred and twenty wasps dead at his feet, or ...' She punctuated the sentence with a deep intake of smoke from her pipe and a raising of both her eyebrows. 'I believe he's killed eight so far,' she finished.
'Ah,' said Locke. 'Well... if I had to choose, I'd be inclined to favour the boy. Call me an optimist.'
'I do.' She let two long streams of smoke fall out of her nose like faint grey waterfalls, and she smiled. 'I would take the wasps. Shall we call it a wager? Two hundred solari from me, one hundred apiece from each of you?'
'I'm as fond of a small wager as the next man, but let's ask the next man -Jerome?'
'If it's your pleasure, madam, our coin-purses are yours to command.'
'What a font of gracious untruths you two are.' She beckoned one of Requin's attendants, and the three of them pledged their credit with the house for markers. They received four short wooden sticks engraved with ten rings apiece. The attendant recorded their names on a tablet and moved on; the tempo of the betting around the room was still rising.
