The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves Read Online Free PDF Page A

specific occasion he again failed spectacularly to be circumspect.
    When the Thiefmaker realized what the boy had done, he went to see the Capa of Camorr
     and secured permission for one little death. Only as an afterthought did he go to
     see the Eyeless Priest, intent not on mercy but on one last chance for a slim profit.
7
    THE SKY was a fading red, and nothing remained of the day save for a line of molten
     gold slowly lowering on the western horizon. Locke Lamora trailed in the long shadow
     of the Thiefmaker, who was leading him to the Temple of Perelandro to be sold. At
     long last, Locke had discovered where the older children had been disappearing to.
    A great glass arch led from the northwest base of Shades’ Hill to the eastern edge
     of the long, vast Temple District. At the apex of this bridge the Thiefmaker paused
     and stared north, across the lightless houses of the Quiet, across the mist-wreathed
     waters of the rushing Angevine, to the shaded manors and tree-lined white stone boulevards
     of the four Alcegrante islands, laid out in opulence beneath the impossible height
     of the Five Towers.
    The Five were the most prominent Elderglass structures in a city thick with the arcane
     substance. The smallest and least magnificent, Dawncatcher, was merely eighty feet
     wide and four hundred feet tall. The true color of each smooth tower was mingled now
     with the sinking furnace-light of sunset, and the weblike net of cables and cargo
     baskets that threaded the tower tops was barely visible against the carmine sky.
    “We’ll wait here a moment, boy,” said the Thiefmaker with uncharacteristic wistfulness
     in his voice. “Here on my bridge. So few come to Shades’ Hill this way, it might as
     well be mine.”
    The Duke’s Wind that blew in from the Iron Sea by day had turned; the night, as always,
     would be ruled by the muggy Hangman’s Wind that blew from land to sea, thick with
     the scents of farm fields and rotting marshes.
    “I’m getting rid of you, you know,” the Thiefmaker added after a moment. “Not, ahhh,
     fooling. Good-bye forever. It’s a pity you’re missing something. Common sense, perhaps.”
    Locke said nothing, instead staring up at the vast glass towers as the sky behind
     them drained of color. The blue-white stars brightened, and the last rays of the sun
     vanished in the west like a great eye closing.
    As the first hint of true darkness seemed to fall over the city, a new light rose
     faint and glimmering to push it back. This light gleamed from within the Elderglass
     of the Five Towers themselves, and within the translucent glass of the bridge on which
     they were standing. It waxed with every passing breath, gaining strength until it
     bathed the city with the fey half-light of an overcast day.
    The hour of Falselight had come.
    From the heights of the Five Towers to the obsidian smoothness of the vast glass breakwaters,
     to the artificial reefs beneath the slate-colored waves, Falselight radiated from
     every surface and every shard of Elderglass in Camorr, from every speck of the alien
     material left so long before by the creatures that had first shaped the city. Every
     night, as the west finally swallowed the sun, the glass bridges would become threads
     of firefly light; the glass towers and glass avenues and the strange glass sculpture-gardens
     would shimmer wanly with violet and azure and orange and pearl white, and the moons
     and stars would fade to gray.
    This was what passed for twilight in Camorr—the end of work for the last daylight
     laborers, the calling of the night watches and the sealing of the landward gates.
     An hour of supernatural radiance that would soon enough give way to true night.
    “Let’s be about our business,” the Thiefmaker said, and the two of them headed down
     into the Temple District, walking on soft alien light.
8
    FALSELIGHT WAS the last hour during which the temples of Camorr traditionally remained
     open, and the Eyeless