“Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile

And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.”

King Henry VI, Part III

LOCKE LAMORA’S RULE of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim’s trust forever. This time around, he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.

Locke was on his knees, and Calo, standing behind him, had a hemp rope coiled three times around his neck. The rough stuff looked impressive, and it would leave Locke’s throat a very credible shade of red. No genuine Camorri assassin old enough to waddle in a straight line would garrote with anything but silk or wire, of course (the better to crease the victim’s windpipe). Yet if Don Lorenzo Salvara could tell a fake strangling from the real thing in the blink of an eye at thirty paces, they’d badly misjudged the man they planned to rob and the whole game would be shot anyway.

“Can you see him yet? Or Bug’s signal?” Locke hissed his question as lightly as he could, then made a few impressive gurgling sounds.

“No signal. No Don Salvara. Can you breathe?”

“Fine, just fine,” Locke whispered, “but shake me some more. That’s the convincer.”

They were in the dead-end alley beside the old Temple of Fortunate Waters; the temple’s prayer waterfalls could be heard gushing somewhere behind the high plaster wall. Locke clutched once again at the harmless coils of rope circling his neck and spared a glance for the horse staring at him from just a few paces away, laden down with a rich-looking cargo of merchant’s packs. The poor dumb animal was Gentled; there was neither curiosity nor fear behind the milk-white shells of its unblinking eyes. It wouldn’t have cared even had the strangling been real.

Precious seconds passed; the sun was high and bright in a sky scalded free of clouds, and the grime of the alley clung like wet cement to the legs of Locke’s breeches. Nearby, Jean Tannen lay in the same moist muck while Galdo pretended (mostly) to kick his ribs in. He’d been merrily kicking away for at least a minute, just as long as his twin brother had supposedly been strangling Locke.

Don Salvara was supposed to pass the mouth of the alley at any second and, ideally, rush in to rescue Locke and Jean from their “assailants.” At this rate, he would end up rescuing them from boredom.

“Gods,” Calo whispered, bending his mouth to Locke’s ear as though he might be hissing some demand, “where the hell is that damn Salvara? And where’s Bug? We can’t keep this shit up all day; other people do walk by the mouth of this damned alley!”

“Keep strangling me,” Locke whispered. “Just think of twenty thousand full crowns and keep strangling me. I can choke all day if I have to.”

EVERYTHING HAD gone beautifully that morning in the run-up to the game itself, even allowing for the natural prickliness of a young thief finally allowed a part in his first big score.

“Of course I know where I’m supposed to be when the action starts,” Bug whined. “I’ve spent more time perched up on that temple roof than I did in my mother’s gods-damned womb!”

Jean Tannen let his right hand trail in the warm water of the canal while he took another bite of the sour marsh apple held in his left. The forward gunwale of the flat-bottomed barge was a choice spot for relaxation in the watered-wine light of early morning, allowing all sixteen stone of Jean’s frame to sprawl comfortably-keg belly, heavy arms, bandy legs, and all. The only other person (and the one doing all of the work) in the empty barge was Bug: a lanky, mop-headed twelve-year-old braced against the steering pole at the stern.

“Your mother was in an understandable hurry to get rid of you, Bug.” Jean’s voice was soft and even and wildly incongruous. He spoke like a teacher of music or a copier of scrolls. “We’re not. So indulge me once more with proof of your penetrating comprehension of our game.”

“Dammit,” Bug replied, giving the barge another push against the gentle current of the seaward-flowing canal. “You and Locke and Calo and Galdo are down in the alley between Fortunate Waters and the gardens for the Temple of Nara, right? I’m up on the roof of the temple across the way.”

“Go on,” Jean said around a mouthful of marsh apple. “Where’s Don Salvara?”

Other barges, heavily laden with everything from ale casks to bleating cows, were slipping past the two of them on the clay-colored water of the canal. Bug was poling them north along Camorr’s main commercial waterway, the Via Camorrazza, toward the Shifting Market, and the city was lurching into life around them.

The leaning gray tenements of water-slick stone were spitting their inhabitants out into the sunlight and the rising summer warmth. The month was Parthis, meaning that the night-sweat of condensation already boiling off the buildings as a soupy mist would be greatly missed by the cloudless white heat of early afternoon.

“He’s coming out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters, like he does every Penance Day right around noon. He’s got two horses and one man with him, if we’re lucky.”

“A curious ritual,” Jean said. “Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Deathbed promise to his mother.” Bug drove his pole down into the canal, struggled against it for a moment, and managed to shove them along once more. “She kept the Vadran religion after she married the old Don Salvara. So he leaves an offering at the Vadran temple once a week and gets home as fast as he can so nobody pays too much attention to him. Dammit, Jean, I already know this shit. Why would I be here if you didn’t trust me? And why am I the one who gets to push this stupid barge all the way to the market?”

“Oh, you can stop poling the barge any time you can beat me hand to hand three falls out of five.” Jean grinned, showing two rows of crooked brawler’s teeth in a face that looked as though someone had set it on an anvil and tried to pound it into a more pleasing shape. “Besides, you’re an apprentice in a proud trade, learning under the finest and most demanding masters it has to offer. Getting all the shit-work is excellent for your moral education.”

“You haven’t given me any bloody moral education.”

“Yes. Well, that’s probably because Locke and I have been dodging our own for most of our lives now. As for why we’re going over the plan again, let me remind you that one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison to what we’ll get.”

Jean pointed at one of the city’s slop wagons, halted on a canal-side boulevard to receive a long dark stream of night soil from the upper window of a public alehouse. These wagons were crewed by petty criminals whose offenses were too meager to justify continual incarceration in the Palace of Patience. Shackled to their wagons and huddled in the alleged protection of long leather ponchos, they were let out each morning to enjoy what sun they could when they weren’t cursing the dubious accuracy with which several thousand Camorri emptied their chamber pots.

“I won’t screw it up, Jean.” Bug shook his thoughts like an empty coin purse, searching desperately for something to say that would make him sound as calm and assured as he imagined Jean and all the older Gentlemen Bastards always were-but the mouth of most twelve-year-olds far outpaces the mind. “I just won’t, I bloody won’t, I promise.”