Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent. Part 1

4.

“What do you mean, I’m to be ordinary?”

“Ordinary. You speak Therin, you know what the word means, you’ve seen other people embodying the concept.” Chains set his hands on Locke’s shoulders, a familiar gesture that was full of warm, affectionate strength and also prevented him from escaping. “You steal as a habit. You steal waking and sleeping. Left unattended, you strip your surroundings of interesting objects like a bird decorating a nest. You’ve done well moderating yourself over the years, but now I need you to restrain your sense of liberty, as a man in the becoming. You must make room in your life for discretion.”

“I am discreet. I am a shadow hiding in another shadow on a very dark day.”

“Locke, when I sent you on that errand today, to the chandler and the—”

Locke didn’t bother prevaricating. He pulled two votive candles out of his pocket, little beeswax disks scented with lemon and lavender.

“Behold the miracle,” said Chains, “of the boy who went out with coin for twenty hour-mark candles and somehow came back with two extras.”

“I have to keep in practice!”

“You are dear to me, boy, but on my soul I doubt you were thinking so constructively. You saw, you took. A bird decorating a nest.”

“HONK,” cried Sabetha, catalyzing another outburst of giggles from herself, Jean, and the Sanzas. Chains sighed the whole-body sigh of a man who freshly resolves not to murder five children every day of his life.

“Locke, you know the world will kill you, but you need to feel it under your skin and in your bones. You need to stew in the juices of being… vulnerable. Your summer will be away from here, away from me. You’ll be among Right People, they’ll know you have a garrista, but apart from that you’ll work hard and live small. You’ll take drudge wages for dogsbody toil and the only schemes you will play — the only schemes — will be the little tricks and filches any tavern boy contrives. Out of that, you will gather half a crown in total and bring it to me as your kick-up, to me and then to Capa Barsavi. Like a cur, like a slouch, like an ordinary slouch, d’you hear me?”

“May I at least come back to visit?” said Locke, quietly. “On Penance Days, maybe?”

“You must ask permission of the people I’m sending you to,” said Chains. “They have your keeping for the summer, your oath as my pezon binds you to them, and it is they you must reckon with. But cheer up, Locke. If it’s any consolation, the place I’m sending you is a nest of misadventure, full of interesting people ruining themselves.”