Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent. Part 1

2.

Six months since the Orphan’s Moon. If anointment as a secret initiate of the Crooked Warden had yielded Locke Lamora any benefits, they were as yet being kept from him. He was thirteen and a half, emphasis on the half. Half a man, half at ease, half-voiced. Nor was he alone. Calo and Galdo were in the midst of lingering uncomfortable changes, and Jean’s voice had started to warble.

“My broken instruments, all slack-strung and jangling,” said Father Chains. “Your mechanisms are misordered, your bodily humours are jesting at your expense. It happens to everyone but here it seems to be happening all at once.”

Even Sabetha, whose customary poise often seemed like a sarcastic commentary on the chaos around her, had been swept up in the collective fit of awkwardness. Just now she was afflicted with cramps. The boys had together made a sympathetic embassy to her cotside, where Calo squeaked out such a rusty, discordant note that she had burst into giggles and honked at him like a goose. Soon they all broke down in laughter and honking, the Sanza brothers sounding as if their geese had been force-fed wet gravel. It was a rare moment of complete levity and Chains let them have it, before he quietly swept into the room shadowed by his plans for their summer.

“Placements,” said Chains. “It’s more of that tedious, invaluable, life-saving education you’re always whining about, but you won’t be false-facing this time. You’ll be out on loan. Seconded to some of the gangs we’re on better terms with. No complicated scheming, no secrets. Just do as you’re told, watch carefully, learn everything you can. Ripen in wisdom for a few months and perhaps your throats, bones, and bowels will be less at war with you when I gather you back into the fold.”

“So we are to return intellectually and physically perfected,” croaked Galdo.

“No doubt. And bring back five hundred pounds of cut rubies on the back of a unicorn while you’re at it,” said Chains. “Though of you all… the one I might be asking to perform the greatest impossibility is Locke.”