use in twenty years. By night, they were an active crew of sneak-thieves, muggers and coat-charmers. By day, they slept, diced and drank away most of their profits. Jean kicked in their door (though it hung loosely in its frame, and wasn't locked) at the second hour of the afternoon on a bright, sunny day.
There were an even dozen of them in the old tannery, young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-odd. Standard membership for a local-trouble sort of gang. Those that weren't awake were slapped back to consciousness by their associates as Jean strolled into the centre of the tannery floor.
'Good afternoon!' He gave a slight bow, from the neck, then spread his arms wide. 'Who's the biggest, meanest motherfucker here? Who's the best bruiser in the Brass Coves?'
After a few seconds of silence and surprised stares, a relatively stocky young man with a crooked nose and a shaved head leapt down onto the dusty floor from an open staircase. The boy walked up to Jean and smirked.
'You're lookin' at him.'
Jean nodded, smiled, then whipped both of his arms around so that his cupped hands cracked against both of the boy's ears. He staggered, and Jean took a firm hold of his head, lacing his fingers tightly behind the rear arch of his skull. He pulled the tough's head sharply downward and fed him a knee - once, twice, three times. As the boy's face met Jean's kneecap for the last time, Jean let go, and the tough sprawled backwards on the tannery floor, senseless as a side of cold, salted meat.
'Wrong,' said Jean, not even breathing heavily. 'I'm the meanest motherfucker here. Vm the biggest bruiser in the Brass Coves.'
'You ain't in the Brass Coves, arsehole,' shouted another boy, who nonetheless had a look of awed disquiet on his face.
'Let's kill this piece of shit!'
A third boy, wearing a tattered four-cornered cap and a set of handmade necklaces threaded with small bones, darted toward Jean with a stiletto drawn back in his right hand. When the thrust came, Jean stepped back, caught the boy by the wrist and yanked him forward into a backfist from his other hand. While the boy spat blood and tried to blink tears of pain from his eyes, Jean kicked him in the groin, then swept his legs out from under him. The boy's stiletto appeared in Jean's left hand as if by magic, and he twirled it slowly.
'Surely you boys can do simple sums,' he said. 'One plus one equals don't fuck with me.'
The boy who'd charged at him with the knife sobbed, then threw up.
'Let's talk taxes.' Jean walked around the periphery of the tannery floor, kicking over a few empty wine bottles; there were dozens of them scattered around. 'Looks like you boys pull in enough coin to eat and drink; that's good. I'll have forty per cent of it, cold metal. I don't want goods. You'll pay your taxes every other day, starting today. Cough up your purses and turn out your pockets.'
'Fuck that!'
Jean stalked toward the boy who'd spoken; the youth was standing against the far wall of the tannery with his arms crossed. 'Don't like it? Hit me, then.'
'Uh...'
'You don't think that's fair? You mug people for a living, right? Make a fist, son.'
'Uh...'
Jean grabbed him, spun him around, took hold of him by his neck and by the top of his breeches and rammed him head-first into the thick wood of the tannery's outer wall several times. The boy hit the ground with a thud when Jean let go; he was unable to fight back when Jean patted down his tunic and came up with a small leather purse.
'Added penalty,' said Jean, 'for damaging the wall of my tannery with your head.' He emptied the purse into his own, then tossed it back down beside the boy. 'Now, all of you get down here and line up. Line up! Four-tenths isn't much. Be honest: you can guess what I'll do if I find out that you're not.'
'Who the hell are you?' The first boy to approach Jean with coins in his hand offered up the question along with the money.
'You can call me?
As Jean began to speak, the boy conjured a dagger in his other hand, dropped the coins and lunged. The bigger man shoved the boy's extended arm to the outside, bent nearly in half, and slammed his right shoulder into the boy's stomach. He then lifted the boy effortlessly on his shoulder and dropped him over his back, so that the boy struck the floor of the tannery nearly face-first. He ended up writhing in pain beside the last Cove who'd pulled a blade on Jean.
'Callas. Tavrin Callas, actually.' Jean smiled. 'That was a good
thought, coming at me while I was talking. That at least I can respect.' Jean shuffled backwards several paces to block the door. 'But it seems to me that the subtle philosophical concept I'm attempting to descant upon may be going over your heads. Do I really have to kick all your arses before you take the hint?'
There was a chorus of mutterings and a healthy number of boys shook their heads, however reluctantly.
'Good.' The extortion went smoothly after that; Jean wound up with a satisfying collection of coins, surely enough to keep him and Locke ensconced at their inn for another week. 'I'm off, then. Rest easy and work well tonight. I'll be back tomorrow, at the second hour of the afternoon. We can start talking about how things are going to be now that I'm the new boss of the Brass Coves.'
3
Naturally, they all armed themselves, and at the second hour of the afternoon the next day they were waiting in ambush for Jean.
To their surprise, he strolled into the old tannery with a Vel Virazzo constable at his side. The woman was tall and muscular, dressed in a plum-purple coat reinforced with a lining of fine iron chain; she had brass epaulettes on her shoulders and long brown hair pulled back in a tight swordswoman's tail with brass rings. Four more constables took up position just outside the door; they wore similar coats, but also carried long, lacquered sticks and heavy wooden shields slung over their backs.
'Hello, lads,' said Jean. All around the room, daggers, stilettos, broken bottles and sticks were disappearing from sight. 'I'm sure some of you recognize Prefect Levasto and her men.'
'Boys,' said the prefect offhandedly, hooking her thumbs into her leather sword-belt. Alone of all the constables, she carried a cutlass in a plain black sheath.
'Prefect Levasto,' said Jean, 'is a wise woman, and she leads wise men. They happen to enjoy money, which I am now providing as a consideration for the hardship and tedium of their duties. If anything should chance to happen to me, why, they would lose a new source of the very thing they enjoy.'
'It would be heartbreaking,' said the prefect.
'And it would have consequences,' said Jean.
The prefect set one of her boots on an empty wine bottle and applied steady pressure until it shattered beneath her heel. 'Heartbreaking,' she repeated with a sigh.
'I'm sure you're all bright lads,' said Jean. 'I'm sure you've all enjoyed the prefect's visit.'
'Shouldn't like to have to repeat it,' said Levasto with a grin. She turned slowly and ambled back out through the doorway. The sound of her squad marching away soon receded into the distance.
The Brass Coves looked down at Jean, glumly. The four boys closest to the door, with their hands behind their backs, were the ones wearing livid black and green bruises from before.
'Why the fuck are you doing this to us?' grumbled one of them.
'I'm not your enemy, boys. Believe it or not, I think you'll really come to appreciate what I can do for you. Now shut up and listen. First,' said Jean, raising his voice so everyone could hear, 'I'd like to say that it's rather sad, how long you've been around without getting the city watch on the take. They were so eager for it when I made the offer. Like sad, neglected little puppies.'
Jean was wearing a long black vest over a stained white tunic. He reached up beneath his back, under the vest, with his right hand.
'But,' he continued, 'at least the fact that your first thought was to kill me shows some spirit. Let's see those toys again. Come on, show 'em off.'
Sheepishly, the boys drew out their weapons once again, and Jean inspected them with a sweep of his head. 'Mmmm. Gimp steel, broken bottles, little sticks, a hammer ... boys, the trouble with this set-up is that you think those are threats. They're not. They're insults.'
He started moving while the last few words were still coming out of his mouth; his left hand slid up beneath his vest beside his right. Both of his arms came out and up in a blur, and then he grunted as he let fly with both of his hatchets, overhand.
There was a pair of half-full wineskins hanging on pegs on the far wall; each one exploded in a gout of cheap Verrari red that spattered several boys nearby. Jean's hatchets had impaled the wineskins dead-centre, and stuck in the wood behind them without quivering.
''That was a threat,' he said, cracking his knuckles. 'And that's why you now work for me. Anyone else really want to dispute that at this point?'
The boys standing closest to the wineskins edged backwards as Jean
stepped over and wrenched his hatchets out of the wall. 'Didn't think so. But don't take it amiss,' Jean continued. 'It works in your favour, too. A boss needs to protect what's his if he's going to stay the boss. If anyone other than me tries to shove you around, let me know. I'll pay them a visit. That's my job.'
The next day, the Brass Coves grudgingly lined up to pay their taxes. The last boy in line, as he dropped his copper coins into Jean's hands, muttered: 'You said you'd help if someone else gave us the business. Some of the Coves got kicked around this morning by the Black Sleeves, from over on the north side.'
Jean nodded sagely and slipped his takings into his coat pocket.
The next night, after making inquiries, he sauntered into a north-side dive called the Sign of the Brimming Cup. The only thing the tavern was brimming with was thugs, a good seven or eight of them, all with dirty black cloths tied around the arms of their jackets and tunics. They were the only customers, and they looked up with suspicion as he closed the door behind him and carefully slid home the wooden bolt.
'Good evening!' He smiled and cracked his knuckles. 'I'm curious. Who's the biggest, meanest motherfucker in the Black Sleeves?'
The day after that, he collected his taxes from the Brass Coves with the bruised knuckles of his right hand wrapped in a poultice. For the first time, most of the boys paid enthusiastically. A few even started to call him 'Tav'.
4
But Locke did not exercise his wounds, as he'd promised.
Locke's thin supply of coins was parcelled out for wine; his poison of choice was a particularly cheap local slop. More purple than red, with a bouquet like turpentine, its scent soon saturated the room he shared with Jean at the Silver Lantern. Locke took it constandy 'for the pain'; Jean remarked one evening that his pain must be increasing as the days went on, for the empty skins and bottles were multiplying proportionally. They quarrelled - or more accurately rekindled their ongoing quarrel - and Jean stomped off into the night, for neither the first nor the last time.
Those first few days in Vel Virazzo, Locke would totter down the steps to the common room some nights, where he would play a few
desultory hands of cards with some of the locals. He conned them mirthlessly with whatever fast-fingers tricks he could manage with just one good hand. Soon enough they began to shun his games and his bad attitude, and he retreated back to the third floor, to drink alone in silence. Food and cleanliness remained afterthoughts. Jean tried to get a dog-leech in to examine Locke's wounds, but Locke drove the man out with a string of invective that made Jean (whose speech could be colourful enough to strike fire from damp tinder) blush.
'Of your friend I can find no trace,' said the man. 'He seems to have been eaten by one of the thin, hairless apes from the Okanti isles; all it does is screech at me. What became of the last leech to take a look at him?'
'We left him in Talisham,' said Jean. 'I'm afraid my friend's attitude moved him to bring an early end to his own sea voyage.'
'Well, I might have done the same. I waive my fee, in profound sympathy. Keep your silver - you shall need it for wine. Or poison.'
More and more, Jean found himself spending time with the Brass Coves for no better reason than to avoid Locke. A week passed, then another. 'Tavrin Callas' was becoming a known and solidly respected figure in Vel Virazzo's crooked fraternity. Jean's arguments with Locke became more circular, more frustrating, more pointless. Jean instinctively recognized the downward arc of terminal self-pity, but had never dreamed that he'd have to drag Locke, of all people, out of it. He avoided the problem by training the Coves.
At first, he passed on just a few hints - how to use simple hand signals around strangers, how to set distractions before picking pockets, how to tell real gems from paste and avoid stealing the latter. Inevitably, he began to receive respectful entreaties to 'show them a thing or two' of the tricks he'd used to pound four Coves into the ground. First in line with these requests were the four who'd been pounded.
A week after that, the alchemy was fully under way. Half a dozen boys were rolling around in the dust of the tannery floor while Jean coached them on all the essentials of infighting - leverage, initiative, situational awareness. He began to demonstrate the tricks, both merciful and cruel, that had kept him alive over half a lifetime spent making his points with his fists and hatchets.
Under Jean's influence, the boys began to take more of an interest in the state of their old tannery. He explicitly encouraged them to start viewing it as a headquarters, which demanded certain comforts.
Alchemical lanterns appeared, hanging from the rafters. Fresh oilpaper was nailed up over the broken windows, and new planks and straw were raised up to the roof to plug holes. The boys stole cushions, cheap tapestries and portable shelves.
