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

could
     be heard the first faint flutings of pipes, the bone-chilling sound that called out
     the duke’s Ghouls—the Quarantine Guard.
    The participants in Locke’s smash-and-grab adventure threaded their way through the
     growing crowds of confused and panicked Narrows dwellers, and scuttled home indirectly
     through the Mara Camorrazza or the Coalsmoke district.
    They returned with the largest haul of goods and food in the memory of the Shades’
     Hill orphans, and a larger pile of copper half-barons than Locke had hoped for. He
     hadn’t known that men who played at dice or cards kept money out in plain view, for
     in Shades’ Hill such games were the exclusive domain of the oldest and most popular
     orphans, and he was neither.
    For a few hours, the Thiefmaker was merely bemused.
    But that night, panicked drunks set fire to the Elderglass Vine, and hundreds tried
     to flee the Narrows when the city watch was unable to locate the boy who’d first triggered
     the panic. Riot drums beat until dawn, bridges were blocked, and Duke Nicovante’s
     archers took to the canals around the Narrows in flat-bottomed boats, with arrows
     to last all night and then some.
    The next morning found the Thiefmaker once again in private conversation with his
     littlest plague orphan.
    “The problem with you, Locke
fucking
Lamora, is that you are not
circumspect
. Do you know what
circumspect
means?”
    Locke shook his head.
    “Let me put it like this. That tavern had an owner. That owner worked for Capa Barsavi,
     the big man himself, just like I do. Now, that tavern owner paid the Capa, just like
     I do, to avoid
accidents
. Thanks to you, he’s had one hell of an
accident
—even though he was paying his money and didn’t have an
accident
forthcoming. So, if you follow me, inciting a pack of drunk fucking animals to burn
     that place to the ground with a fake plague scare was the opposite of a
circumspect
means of operation. So now can you venture a guess as to what the word means?”
    Locke knew a good time to nod vigorously when he heard it.
    “Unlike the last time you tried to send me to an early grave, this one I can’t buy
     my way out of, and thank the gods I don’t need to, because the mess is huge. The yellowjackets
     clubbed down two hundred people last night before they all figured out that nobody
     had the Whisper. The duke called out his fucking regulars and was about to give the
     Narrows a good scrubbing with fire-oil. Now, the only reason—and I mean the
only
reason—that you’re not floating in a shark’s stomach with a very surprised expression
     on your face is that the Elderglass Vine is just a pile of ashes; nobody knows anything
     was stolen from it
before
it became that pile of ashes. Nobody except us.
    “So, we’re
all
going to agree that nobody in this hill knows anything about what happened, and
you
are going to relearn some of that reticence I talked about when you first arrived
     here. You remember reticence, right?”
    Locke nodded.
    “I just want nice, neat little jobs from you, Lamora. I want a purse here, a sausage
     there. I want you to swallow your ambition, shit it out like a bad meal, and be a
circumspect
little teaser for about the next thousand years.Can you do that for me? Don’t rob any more yellowjackets. Don’t burn any more taverns.
     Don’t start any more fucking riots. Just pretend to be a coarse-witted little cutpurse
     like your brothers and sisters. Clear?”
    Again, Locke nodded, doing his best to look rueful.
    “Good. And now,” the Thiefmaker said as he produced his nearly full flask of ginger
     oil, “we’re going to engage in some
reinforcement
of my admonishments.”
    And, for a time (once Locke recovered his powers of speech and unlabored breathing),
     everything was serene.
    But the Seventy-seventh Year of Morgante became the Seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani,
     and though Locke succeeded in hiding his actions from the Thiefmaker for a time, on
     one more