Free Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch Page B

teeth together and beat the flat of his good hand against a barrel.
    “What the hell’s the matter with you, Jean? You’re making a gods-damned scene!”
    “Not really. Last week I told the keeper you were a Camorri don traveling incognito, trying to recover from a bout of madness. Just now I set an awful lot of silver on his bar. You do remember silver, don’t you? How we used to steal it from people, back when you were pleasant company?”
    “This has ceased to amuse me, Jean! Give me back my gods-damned wine!”
    “Gods-damned, it is. And I’m afraid that if you want it, you’re going to have to climb out your window.”
    Locke took a step back and stared at the makeshift wall, dumbfounded.
    “Jean, you can’t be serious.”
    “I’ve never been more serious.”
    “Go to hell. Go to hell! I can’t climb out a bloody window. My wrist—”
    “You fought the Gray King with one arm nearly cut off. You climbed out a window five hundred feet up in Raven’s Reach. And here you are, three stories off the ground, helpless as a kitten in a grease barrel. Crybaby. Pissant.”
    “You are deliberately trying to provoke me!”
    “No shit,” said Jean. “Sharp as a cudgel, you are.”
    Locke stomped back into the room, fuming. He stared at the shuttered window, bit his tongue, and stormed back to Jean’s wall.
    “Please let me out,” he said, as evenly as he could manage. “Your point is driven home.”
    “I’d drive it home with a blackened steel pike if I had one,” said Jean. “Why are you talking to me when you should be climbing out the window?”
    “Gods damn you!”
    Back to the room; Locke paced furiously. He swung his arms about tentatively; the cuts on his left arm ached, and the deep wound on his shoulder still twinged cruelly. His battered left wrist felt as though it might almost serve. Pain or no pain…he curled his left-hand fingers into a fist, stared down at them, and then looked up at the window with narrowed eyes.
    “Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll show you a thing or three, you son of a bloody silk merchant.”
    Locke tore his bedding apart, knotting sheet-ends to blankets, inviting twinges from his injuries. The pain only seemed to drive him on faster. He tightened his last knot, threw open the shutters, and tossed his makeshift rope out the window. He tied the end in his hands to his bed frame. It wasn’t a terribly sturdy piece of furniture, but then, he didn’t weigh all that much.
    Out the window he went.
    Vel Virazzo was an old, low city; Locke’s impressions as he swung there, three stories above the faintly misted street, came in flashes. Flat-topped, sagging buildings of stone and plaster…reefed sails on black masts in the harbor…white moonlight gleaming on dark water…red lights burning atop glass pylons, in a line receding out toward the horizon. Locke shut his eyes, clung to his sheets, and bit his tongue to avoid throwing up.
    It seemed easiest to simply let himself slide downward; he did so in fits and starts, letting his palms grow warm against the sheets and blankets before stopping. Down ten feet…twenty…he balanced precariously on the top sill of the inn’s common-room window and gasped in a few deep breaths before continuing. Warm as the night was, he was getting chilly from the soaking he’d received.
    The last end of the last sheet ended about six feet off the ground; Locke slid down as far as he could, then let himself drop. His heels slapped against the cobblestones, and he found that Jean Tannen was already waiting for him, with a cheap gray cloak in his hands. Before Locke could move, Jean flung the cloak around his shoulders.
    “You son of a bitch,” cried Locke, pulling the cloak around himself with both hands. “You snake-souled, dirty-minded son of a bitch ! I hope a shark tries to suck your cock!”
    “Why, Master Lamora, look at you,” said Jean. “Charming a lock, climbing out a window. Almost as though you used to be a thief.”
    “I