Free Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

thing the tavern was brimming with was thugs, a good seven or eight of them, all with dirty black cloths tied around the arms of their jackets and tunics. They were the only customers, and they looked up with suspicion as he closed the door behind him and carefully slid home the wooden bolt.
    â€œGood evening!” He smiled and cracked his knuckles. “I’m curious. Who’s the biggest, meanest motherfucker in the Black Sleeves?”
    The day after that, he collected his taxes from the Brass Coves with the bruised knuckles of his right hand wrapped in a poultice. For the first time, most of the boys paid enthusiastically. A few even started to call him “Tav.”
    4
    BUT LOCKE did not exercise his wounds, as he’d promised.
    Locke’s thin supply of coins was parceled out for wine; his poison of choice was a particularly cheap local slop. More purple than red, with a bouquet like turpentine, its scent soon saturated the room he shared with Jean at the Silver Lantern. Locke took it constantly “for the pain” Jean remarked one evening that his pain must be increasing as the days went on, for the empty skins and bottles were multiplying proportionally. They quarreled—or more accurately rekindled their ongoing quarrel—and Jean stomped off into the night, for neither the first nor the last time.
    Those first few days in Vel Virazzo, Locke would totter down the steps to the common room some nights, where he would play a few desultory hands of cards with some of the locals. He conned them mirthlessly with whatever fast-fingers tricks he could manage with just one good hand. Soon enough they began to shun his games and his bad attitude, and he retreated back to the third floor, to drink alone in silence. Food and cleanliness remained afterthoughts. Jean tried to get a dog-leech in to examine Locke’s wounds, but Locke drove the man out with a string of invective that made Jean (whose speech could be colorful enough to strike fire from damp tinder) blush.
    â€œOf your friend, I can find no trace,” said the man. “He seems to have been eaten by one of the thin hairless apes from the Okanti isles; all it does is screech at me. What became of the last leech to take a look at him?”
    â€œWe left him in Talisham,” said Jean. “I’m afraid my friend’s attitude moved him to bring an early end to his own sea voyage.”
    â€œWell, I might have done the same. I waive my fee, in profound sympathy. Keep your silver—you shall need it for wine. Or poison.”
    More and more, Jean found himself spending time with the Brass Coves for no better reason than to avoid Locke. A week passed, then another. “Tavrin Callas” was becoming a known and solidly respected figure in Vel Virazzo’s crooked fraternity. Jean’s arguments with Locke became more circular, more frustrating, more pointless. Jean instinctively recognized the downward arc of terminal self-pity, but had never dreamed that he’d have to drag Locke, of all people, out of it. He avoided the problem by training the Coves.
    At first, he passed on just a few hints—how to use simple hand signals around strangers, how to set distractions before picking pockets, how to tell real gems from paste and avoid stealing the latter. Inevitably, he began to receive respectful entreaties to “show them a thing or two” of the tricks he’d used to pound four Coves into the ground. First in line with these requests were the four who’d been pounded.
    A week after that, the alchemy was fully under way. Half a dozen boys were rolling around in the dust of the tannery floor while Jean coached them on all the essentials—leverage, initiative, situational awareness. He began to demonstrate the tricks, both merciful and cruel, that had kept him alive over half a lifetime spent making his points with his fists and hatchets.
    Under Jean’s influence, the boys began to take