The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves Read Online Free

to swallowing the smoldering ashes of poison oak.
    Those who wouldn’t open their mouths had it poured into their noses while older children
     held them upside down. This never had to happen twice to anyone.
    In time, even those with ginger-scalded tongues and swollen throats learned the rudiments
     of coat-teasing and “borrowing” from the wares of unwary merchants. The Thiefmaker
     enthusiastically instructed them in the architecture of doublets, waistcoats, frock
     coats, and belt pouches, keeping up with all the latest fashions as they came off
     the docks. Hiswards learned what could be cut away, what could be torn away, and what must be teased
     out with deft fingers.
    “The point, my loves, is not to hump the subject’s leg like a dog or clutch their
     hand like a lost babe. Half a second of actual contact with the subject is often too
     long by far.” The Thiefmaker mimed a noose going around his neck and let his tongue
     bulge out past his teeth. “You will live or die by three sacred rules: First, always
     ensure that the subject is nicely distracted, either by your teasers or by some convenient
     bit of unrelated bum-fuckery, like a fight or a house fire. House fires are
marvelous
for our purposes; cherish them. Second, minimize—and I damn well mean
minimize
—contact with the subject even when they are distracted.” He released himself from
     his invisible noose and grinned slyly. “Lastly, once you’ve done your business, clear
     the vicinity even if the subject is as dumb as a box of hammers. What did I teach
     you?”
    “Clutch once, then run,” his students chanted. “Clutch twice, get hung!”
    New orphans came in by ones and twos; older children seemed to leave the hill every
     few weeks with little ceremony. Locke presumed that this was evidence of some category
     of discipline well beyond ginger oil, but he never asked, as he was too low in the
     hill’s pecking order to risk it or trust the answers he would get.
    As for his own training, Locke went to Streets the day after he arrived, and was immediately
     thrown in with the teasers (punitively, he suspected). By the end of his second month,
     his skills had secured him elevation to the ranks of the clutchers. This was considered
     a step up in social status, but Lamora alone in the entire hill seemed to prefer working
     with the teasers long after he was entitled to stop.
    He was sullen and friendless inside the hill, but teasing brought him to life. He
     perfected the use of over-chewed orange pulp as a substitute for vomit; where other
     teasers would simply clutch their stomachs and moan, Locke would season his performances
     by spewing a mouthful of warm white-and-orange slop at the feet of his intended audience
     (or, if he was in a particularly perverse mood, all over their dress hems or leggings).
    Another favorite device of his was a long dry twig concealed in one leg of his breeches
     and tied to his ankle. By rapidly going down to his knees, he could snap this twig
     with an audible noise; this, followed by a piercing wail, was an effective magnet
     for attention and sympathy, especially in the immediate vicinity of a wagon wheel.
     When he’d teased the crowd long enough, he would be rescued from further attention
     by the arrival of several otherteasers, who would loudly announce that they were “dragging him home to Mother” so
     he could see a physiker. His ability to walk would be miraculously recovered just
     as soon as he was hauled around a corner.
    In fact, he worked up a repertoire of artful teases so rapidly that the Thiefmaker
     had cause to take him aside for a second private conversation—this after Locke arranged
     the inconvenient public collapse of a young lady’s skirt and bodice with a few swift
     strokes of a finger-knife.
    “Look here, Locke-after-your-father Lamora,” the Thiefmaker said, “no ginger oil this
     time, I assure you, but I would
greatly
prefer your teases to veer sharply from the