Capa Barsavi coughed out his first few puffs of smoke, the corners of his mouth crinkling upward. “And you’re a very inconsiderate little girl, my dear.” The Capa drew on his sheaf once more and exhaled a straight stream of translucent smoke; the stuff was pleasantly mellow and carried the slightest hint of burnt vanilla. “You must forgive my daughter Nazca; I am helpless to deny her indulgences, and she has acquired the manners of a pirate princess. Particularly now that we are all afraid to come near her deadly new boots.”
“I am never unarmed,” said the little girl, kicking up her heels a few times to emphasize the point.
“And poor Locke most certainly is not ugly, my darling; what he bears is clearly the mark of Shades’ Hill. A month in Chains’ keeping and he’ll be as round and fit as a catapult stone.”
“Hmmph.” The girl continued to stare down at him for a few seconds, then suddenly looked up at her father, absently toying with one of his braided beards while she did so. “Are you making him a pezon, Father?”
“Chains and I did have that in mind, sweetling, yes.”
“Hmmph. Then I want another brandy while you’re doing the ceremony.”
Capa Barsavi’s eyes narrowed; seams deepened by habitual suspicion drew in around his flinty gray stare. “You’ve already had your two brandies for the night, darling; your mother will murder me if I let you have another. Ask one of the men to get you a beer.”
“But I prefer-”
“What you prefer, little tyrant, has nothing to do with what I am telling you. For the rest of the night, you can drink beer or air; the choice is entirely yours.”
“Hmmph. I’ll have beer, then.” Barsavi reached out to lift her down, but she hopped off his lap just ahead of his thick-fingered, heavily calloused hands. Her heels went clack-clack-clack on the hardwood floor of the alcove as she ran to some minion to give her order.
“And if just one more of my men gets kicked in the shin, darling, you’re going to wear reed sandals for a month, I promise,” Barsavi shouted after her, then took another drag of tobacco and turned back to Locke and Chains. “She’s a keg of fire-oil, that one. Last week she refused to sleep at all unless we let her keep a little garrote under her pillows. ‘Just like Daddy’s bodyguards,’ she said. I don’t think her brothers yet realize that the next Capa Barsavi might wear summer dresses and bonnets.”
“I can see why you might have been amused by the Thiefmaker’s stories about our boy here,” Chains said, clasping both of Locke’s shoulders as he spoke.
“Of course. I have become very hard to shock since my children grew above the tops of my knees. But you’re not here to discuss them-you’ve brought me this little man so he can take his first and last oath as a pezon. A few years early, it seems. Come here, Locke.”
Capa Barsavi reached out with his right hand and turned Locke’s head slightly upward by the chin, staring down into Locke’s eyes as he spoke. “How old are you, Locke Lamora? Six? Seven? Already responsible for a breach of the Peace, a burnt-down tavern, and six or seven deaths.” The Capa smirked. “I have assassins five times your age who should be so bold. Has Chains told you the way it is, with my city and my laws?”
Locke nodded.
“You know that once you take this oath I can’t go easy on you, ever again. You’ve had your time to be reckless. If Chains needs to put you down, he will. If I tell him to put you down, he will.”
Again, Locke nodded. Nazca returned to her father’s side, sipping from a tarred leather ale-jack; she stared at Locke over the rim of this drinking vessel, which she had to clutch in both hands.
Capa Barsavi snapped his fingers; one of the toadies in the background vanished through a curtain. “Then I’m not going to bore you with any more threats, Locke. This night, you’re a man. You will do a man’s work and suffer a man’s fate if you cross your brothers and sisters. You will be one of us, one of the Right People; you’ll receive the words and the signs, and you’ll use them discreetly. As Chains, your garrista, is sworn to me, so you are sworn to me, through him. I am your garrista above all garristas. I am the only duke of Camorr you will ever acknowledge. Bend your knee.”
Locke knelt before Barsavi; the Capa held out his left hand, palm down. He wore an ornate ring of black pearl in a white iron setting; nestled inside the pearl by some arcane process was a speck of red that had to be blood.
“Kiss the ring of the Capa of Camorr.”
Locke did so; the pearl was cool beneath his dry lips.
“Speak the name of the man to whom you have sworn your oath.”
“Capa Barsavi,” Locke whispered. At that moment, the capa’s underling returned to the alcove and handed his master a small crystal tumbler filled with dull brown liquid.
“Now,” said Barsavi, “as has every one of my pezon, you will drink my toast.” From one of the pockets of his waistcoat the capa drew a shark’s tooth, one slightly larger than the death-mark Locke wore around his neck. Barsavi dropped the tooth into the tumbler and swirled it around a few times. He then handed the tumbler to Locke. “It’s dark-sugar rum from the Sea of Brass. Drink the entire thing, including the tooth. But don’t swallow the tooth, whatever you do. Keep it in your mouth. Draw it out after all the liquor is gone. And try not to cut yourself.”
Locke’s nose smarted from the stinging aroma of hard liquor that wafted from the tumbler, and his stomach lurched, but he ground his jaws together and stared down at the slightly distorted shape of the tooth within the rum. Silently praying to his new Benefactor to save him from embarrassment, he dashed the contents of the glass into his mouth, tooth and all.
Swallowing was not as easy as he’d hoped-he held the tooth against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, gingerly, feeling its sharp points scrape against the back of his upper front teeth. The liquor burned; he began to swallow in small gulps that soon turned into wheezing coughs. After a few interminable seconds, he shuddered and sucked down the last of the rum, relieved that he had held the tooth carefully in place-
It twisted in his mouth. Twisted, physically, as though wrenched by an unseen hand, and scored a burning slash across the inside of his left cheek. Locke cried out, coughed, and spat up the tooth-it lay there in his open palm, flecked with spit and blood.
“Ahhhhh,” said Capa Barsavi as he plucked the tooth up and slipped it back into his waistcoat, blood and all. “So you see-you are bound by an oath of blood to my service. My tooth has tasted of your life, and your life is mine. So let us not be strangers, Locke Lamora. Let us be capa and pezon, as the Crooked Warden intended.”
At a gesture from Barsavi Locke stumbled to his feet, already inwardly cursing the now-familiar sensation of liquor rapidly going to his head. His stomach was empty from the day’s hangover; the room was already swaying a bit around him. When he set eyes on Nazca once again, he saw that she was smiling at him above her ale-jack, with the air of smarmy tolerance the older children in Shades’ Hill had once shown to him and his compatriots in Streets.
Before he knew what he was doing, Locke bent his knee to her as well.
“If you’re the next Capa Barsavi,” he said rapidly, “I should swear to serve you, too. I do. Madam. Madam Nazca. I mean…Madam Barsavi.”
The girl took a step back. “I already have servants, boy. I have assassins. My father has a hundred gangs and two thousand knives!”
“Nazca Belonna Jenavais Angeliza de Barsavi!” her father thundered. “Now it seems you only grasp the value of strong men as servants. In time, you will come to see the value of gracious ones as well. You shame me.”
Nonplussed, the girl glanced back and forth between Locke and her father several times. Her cheeks slowly turned red. After a few more moments of pouting consideration, she stiffly held out her ale-jack to Locke.