Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent. Part 1

The Unbroken Jar, at the far northeastern tip of the Dregs, was a catch-basin for a dozen disreputable streams of humanity to flow into and mingle, to be drained out onto the streets at sunrise and filled to brimming again the next evening. It was not entirely a bawdy house and not entirely a scum-hole and not entirely a cloister for advanced inebriates, not entirely a trap for the unwary and not entirely a fashionable risk for slumming swells. It averaged a death every night or two, though Locke, in his weeks of working there, had never before witnessed the mortality rate amended in real time as a corpse pushed past him and through the back door.

“Well I’d have sworn he was dead as bacon grease!” said Vilius. “He smells the part.”

The odor wafting from the resurrected man was a point in Vilius’ favor, Locke was forced to admit. He ran inside, breathing through his mouth, for the master of the Jar had stepped out for a moment and the not-dead fellow seemed to know where the counter was. Locke found him slouched there a moment later, spinning a copper baron on the scratched and stained wood.

“I’m concerned about your friends,” said the man, who had a voice like an old clockwork mechanism that had been dropped down some stairs. “To mistake the sleeping for the dead is one thing, but to not go straight to the purse in a corpse’s pockets is hardly natural. I fear they lack the spirit of this city. You, now. You wanted to make gutter soup with my blood and plant me in a garden.”

“I merely proposed what seemed reasonable before you un-killed yourself. Why were you sleeping back there?”

“I was on my way over here to get drunk, but I was still drunk from the last place, and sometimes the sun, you know, it pushes down on your head and says, ‘Here’s a patch of good clean alley stone, lay yourself on it awhile.’ Still, if I ever do cack it hereabouts I want you to handle the arrangements. Foundationing a garden is fine work for any sack of bones. What’s your name, boy?”

“Locke.”

“Well, Locke, I’m now sober enough to get drunk again, so let’s have some of that wine that tastes like a sick baby took a shit in a tub of varnish.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I like the white baby shit varnish, not the red.”

That narrowed it down sufficiently. Locke uncasked a stream of the proper liquid into a clay cup, squinting against the fumes. He took the man’s coin and handed over the cup. The man’s grin drew tight the creases of his face. Wind and sun had practiced upon him; he was not young, and he had reds and purples where healthy people didn’t. He dashed the wine back in one long glug, and when he spoke again, his breath was turpentined.

“I’m Mazoc Szaba. Late of damn near everywhere. Used to sell a sword, back when I owned one.” He tapped the bar; a full copper entitled him to four cups. “These days I mostly make my living as an untidy spectacle.”

“I make my living as the shit-boy.” Locke slid over a second helping of awful wine. “I do everything at every hour and if I were killed in the street they’d throw a rag bucket at me and tell me to mop up my own guts.”

“Locke, if you’re going to sling drinks behind a counter you need to mix ten parts listen to one part tell, and the bit you tell is never woe-is-me. What are you, twelve?”

“Thirteen. Probably.”

“Thirteen. Well, thirteen’s a thicket. Thirteen’s a long suck on a sour teat. Thirteen’s not made for contentment. Anyone who loves being thirteen is the gods’ special flavor of idiot.” Szaba dashed back his wine, tapped the counter again. “You keep your eyes on me now, shit-boy, and sooner or later I’ll show you something that’ll make you feel better about your life.”

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.”