Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent. Part 2

8.

Szaba was, in a way, lucky to have been interrupted before any wagers had gone in, for this limited the number of willing hands that ejected him out the back moments later, and meant it wasn’t worth the bother of sticking a knife into him during his passage.

Locke seethed. Nobody had seemed to notice him providing Szaba’s stake, so that at least was a ribbing he wouldn’t have to endure. But the money! That magnanimous copper from Anjais made him whole for precisely one part back from forty-eight.

Chains hadn’t needed to explain why Locke was expected to scrabble together a purse from this drudgery; as a Gentleman Bastard, his activities paid into the sum that was kicked up to the Capa each week, and the mere fact that he was over here for a few months wouldn’t take his portion off his shoulders. What truly vexed him that night, going round and round in his head as he wiped counters and filled cups and mopped up after people who seemed to like spilling as much as they liked swallowing, was the question of using his skills to get back what he’d lost.

There were a hundred ways, using all the schemes and guiles Chains had taught him, to pull eight solons from fools in half a day. Though perhaps that was a frustrated exaggeration — a couple dozen, perhaps. Well, seven or eight, maybe. But they were seven or eight smooth-practiced schemes that weren’t merely waiting for Botari to set coins in his hand with all the speed and willingness of a mule doing geometry problems. Yet Chains had specifically forbidden him from using those arts.

The night went on. Locke wiped and poured and carried. His own damn fault, this was, for loving the old man enough to obey him even when it meant toil. Tending a conscience was a form of toil, he supposed. He’d tended it for the years it had taken to pay off the careless deaths represented by the shark’s tooth tucked into the little pouch he wore on a cord beneath his tunic. It felt good to brood on such thoughts as he worked. Locke had deep feelings about nearly everything but had not yet aged into the realization that brooding was just about his only means of interacting with those feelings.

The moons were high and lighting his way with soft silver-blue by the time he carried the last of the night’s dross into the alley. A fresh corpse sprawled there, not Szaba’s. Nor was there anything of value on the man’s body. Locke sighed, hunched with weariness, and went back inside to find Cyril and Vilius.