Free Book 5 - With Mercy Toward None by Glen Cook Page B

somebody's going to cut your throat. Before summer's done. You're too damned clumsy."
    Mocker swallowed the lump in that throat. He was bewildered. The man sounded like an evangelist.
    "My eastern friend, I'm going to give you a chance to see Old Man Winter again. I'm looking for someone with your talents and not much conscience. I could use you. If we could dry you out and knock a little sense in your head. You've got the skills, but they're in bad shape."
    "Self, am unsure hearing is accurate. Explicate, please. Am being offered position?"
    "Conditionally. I need a ventriloquist and magician. My performers usually get a share of the net. In your case that won't hold unless you shape up. I'll give you food, found, and lessons in whatever you don't already have. Hypnotism, for instance. Make it a trial period of three months. If you stop the drinking and stealing... Don't try to bullshit me, my friend. I told you I've been watching you.
    "Even without a share it's more than you've got now. Like I said, you won't last the summer this way."
    Mocker hemmed and hawed. He could not believe the man was serious. Nevertheless, he decided to take a chance. He could be no worse off.
    It was a fateful decision. Damo Sparen would quickly shape the raw Mocker clay into the man he would become.
    Sparen was a westerner, and older, but was Mocker's spiritual brother. Their black, lazy souls had been struck on the same dies.
    While supervising Mocker's higher education, Sparen became his first real friend.
    "One thing you've got to learn," Sparen told him early on. "Discipline. Your troubles all stem from a lack of discipline."
    Mocker sputtered.
    "I mean self-discipline, not the poundings you got from Sajac. They're part of your problem, too. You don't know how to handle your freedom.
    "My friend, you made it this far on sheer talent. But you've got to learn some things that don't come instinctively. You've refused so far. So you've been hungry a lot.
    "Sparen's First Law: Always make the mark think he's smarter than you are. Make him think it's him doing the con. Greed will carry it for you then.
    "Second Law: Don't work a con where you're boosting. Or vice versa. I warned you before, don't steal around the carnival. Yesterday you cut a purse within a hundred feet of your puppet show. Don't let it happen again. I'm not patient. You could get my whole operation broken up.
    "Third Law: Don't aggravate the underworld. You got to stay in good with those guys. They're organized. You leave a bad marker with Three Fingers in Hellin Daimiel and run off to Octylya, when you get there the Dragon's men will be waiting. With knives. They like to do each other little favors.
    "Fourth Law: Think big. That crap of sitting in the street selling mud packs made with cat's piss ain't got no future. You'll be doing the same thing fifty years from now. Just like Sajac."
    Mocker finally interjected, "Self, am able to do only what is known to self."
    "Then suppose you stop scheming and stealing long enough to learn something? You're secure here. You don't have to take risks. Expand your talents instead. Look at me, Mocker. I started out where you are now. Today I've got a villa on the Auszura Littoral. A duke is my next door neighbor. I've got copra plantations in Simballawein. I've got mines in Anstokin."
    "Hai! And still... "
    "And still I travel with the carnival? Of course. It's in my blood. It's in yours. We can't resist the challenge. Of what the carnival represents. One more sucker taken for everything but his greedy smile. But I don't do that kind of thing as Sparen. Sparen and his carnival are cover. Sparen is an honest and respected businessman. People trust him enough to loan him money."
    For once in his life Mocker listened.
    "You had what you needed when you got a hold of those jewels. Working capital. More than I started with. How in heaven's name could you have wasted it that way?"
    "Self, am mystified. Am bambazoolooed. Am utterly ignorant of