The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch Page B

things, right?”
    “No,” Locke said. “They only make fish poison from things that Jean eats.”
    Jean harrumphed. “A little fish poison puts hair on your chest. Excepting if you’re
     a fish.”
    Jean kept them nearly against the southern bank of the Angevine, clear of the depths
     where the pole couldn’t reach. Shafts of hot, pearl-white light flashed down on them
     as Eldgerglass bridges passed directly between their barge and the still-rising sun.
     The river was two hundred yards wide, sweating its wetness up into the air along with
     the smell of fish and silt.
    To the north, rippling under the heat-haze, were the orderly slopes of the Alcegrante
     islands, home to the city’s greater commoners and minor nobles. It was a place of
     walled gardens, elaborate water sculptures, and white stone villas, well off-limits
     to anyone dressed as Locke and Jean and Bug were. With the sun approaching its zenith,
     the vast shadows of the Five Towers had withdrawn into the Upper City and were currently
     nothing more than a rosy stained-glass glow that spilled just over the northern edges
     of the Alcegrante.
    “Gods, I love this place,” Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. “Sometimes
     I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets
     rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers
and
the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally
     runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verrar or Jerem,
not to mention
what he does to his own nobles and his common folk.”
    “So that makes us robbers of robbers,” said Bug, “who pretend to be robbers working
     for a robber of other robbers.”
    “Yes, we do sort of screw the pretty picture up, don’t we?” Locke thought for a few
     seconds, clicking his tongue against the insides of his cheeks. “Think of what we
     do as, ah, a sort of secret tax on nobles with more money than prudence. Hey! Here
     we are.”
    Beneath the Tumblehome Inn was a wide and well-kept quay with half a dozen mooring
     posts, none of them currently occupied. The smooth gray embankment was about ten feet
     high here; broad stone steps led up to street level, as did a cobbled ramp for cargo
     and horses. Calo Sanza was waiting for them at the edge of the quay, dressed only
     slightly better than his fellows, with a Gentled horse standing placidly behind him.
     Locke waved.
    “What’s the news?” Locke cried. Jean’s poling was skilled and graceful; the quay was
     twenty yards away, then ten, and then they were sliding up alongside it with a gentle
     scraping noise.
    “Galdo got all the stuff packed into the room—it’s the Bowsprit Suite on the first
     floor,” Calo whispered in response, bending down to Locke and Bug as he picked up
     the barge’s mooring rope.
    Calo had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness
     of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines
     (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines).
     An improbably sharp and hooked nose preceded his good looks like a dagger held at
     guard position.
    Once he had made the barge fast to a mooring post, Calo tossed to Locke a heavy iron
     key attached to a long tassel of braided red and black silk. At a quality rooming
     house like the Tumblehome, each private suite’s door was guarded by a clockwork lockbox
     (removable only by some cunning means known to the owners) that could be swapped out
     from a niche in the door. Each rented room received a random new box and its attendant
     key. With hundreds of such identical-looking boxes stored behind the polished counter
     in the reception hall, the inn could pretty much guarantee that copying keys for later
     break-ins was a practical waste of a thief’s time.
    This courtesy would also give Locke and Jean guaranteed privacy