The Lies of Locke Lamora

Locke arrives at the Floating Grave. A furious Barsavi shows him Nazca’s corpse, inside a barrel of horse urine. Locke is genuinely horrified. When he manages to look more closely at the corpse, he notices claw marks that must come from the Bondsmage’s hawk. He informs Barsavi of this, who asks that Locke and Jean accompany him to his meeting with the Gray King in three days’ time—the meeting where Locke must pretend to be the Gray King.

Locke presents this conundrum to the Gentleman Bastards, who are as upset as Locke is. Locke goes to light a summoning candle to call the Bondsmage. When the Bondsmage appears, Locke expresses his anger through vehement insults. The Bondsmage responds by taking control of Locke’s body, and tells him that if Locke insults him again, the other Bastards will pay the price.

Locke tells Jean what happened, and decides to go to a brothel named the Gilded Lilies to relax. It doesn’t work, and the woman he’s with tells Locke that she knows about Sabetha, and that she understands.

Chains takes Locke and Jean up to the temple roof. He tells them that the Gentleman Bastards are “my life’s work, maybe [...] brat masterpieces” (345). He explains that they can’t always get out of a fight by talking, and points out that Locke isn’t very good in a hand-to-hand fight—but Jean is. Jean and Locke are thrilled to discover that Chains will be sending Jean to The House of Glass Roses, Camorr’s most exclusive school of arms.

Jean arrives the next day. The House of Glass Roses is another Eldren remnant, and its most terrifying room holds an enormous glass sculpture of a rose garden. The paths through the garden are narrow, and if someone cuts themselves or spills blood, the roses suck up the blood and diffuse it throughout the sculpture. This is where Jean is set to meet his new training master, Don Maranzalla.

The Don is cruel to Jean when he arrives, and taunts Jean about his upbringing and his parents. This infuriates Jean, and he yells a retort back. The Don laughs and says that he wanted to see if what Chains said about Jean was true: “By the gods, you do have balls. And a temper’” (358). Jean relaxes and they begin training.

Locke details his plan for the Gray King and Barsavi meeting to the Gentleman Bastards, then puts it into action. He visits Jessaline d’Aubart, the black alchemist who long ago needed a corpse from Father Chains, and requests magic that will make him seem sick for a short time and then leave him feeling better again. Jessaline gives him the closest thing: an emetic that will make him sick, and a remedy that will clear the emetic from his system. Locke purchases them both.

That evening, Locke takes the emetic and begins vomiting. When Capa Barsavi’s two sons come to collect Locke, Jean tells them that Locke has food poisoning. The Barsavi brothers are sympathetic, tell them both to stay home, and leave. When they’ve left, Locke takes the remedy. It restores him somewhat, but he’s still vomited out all the nutrients and liquid in his system and is incredibly weak. They climb a ladder down from their room at the top of the Broken Tower and have an accidental encounter with a few people midway down. They enter a room on the fifth floor and flee down the steps. As they leave the Tower, they see the hawk fly past them.

Father Chains accompanies Locke out of Camorr and toward a village a few miles north called Villa Senziano. Locke is going to learn how to farm and how to appear to be a farmer. He’ll be trained by a man named Vandros, who is “a good fellow; not book-smart but very wise in the everyday sense” (391). Locke presses Chains to tell him why he’s really going to this village. Chains reveals that it’s the village he came from. He and many others in his village joined the Duke’s military in exchange for payment and the promise of a small holding of land. These soldiers were and are still called blackjackets. Chains says that only three people returned from his village: himself, Vandros, and Don Maranzalla.

Chains finally tells Locke that he’s supposed to learn to become a farmer, but that this is another test—this time, a test to see what Locke will do when he’s “off in a strange new place, all on your own” (392).

Barsavi and his men lead a funeral procession to the Echo Hole, where he is set to meet “the Gray King,” or Locke in disguise. Funeral bearers carry a casket that appears to be Nazca’s, but the casket is empty.

Meanwhile, Locke and Jean go to a room near the meeting place where the rest of the Gentlemen Bastards are waiting, and they put Locke in his Gray King disguise. When Locke is ready, he goes to the Echo Hole and waits in the darkness for Barsavi to arrive. The Bondsmage is lurking somewhere in the shadows, and Locke assumes the Bondsmage will help him.

When Barsavi and his people arrive, the Bondsmage deflects their first round of crossbows. However, when Barsavi sends a man forward to punch Locke, he succeeds. Barsavi is gleeful and says that one of the Gray King’s men came to visit the Floating Grave that morning, and told him that the Bondsmage’s spell doesn’t cover hand-to-hand combat. Locke realizes that the Gray King and the Bondsmage have led him into an ambush. Barsavi’s sons come forward and hit and punch him; one of them delivers a blow “from Locke Lamora” (409). Locke, in horror, realizes that he can’t come clean about who he is, because he’s already shown himself to be protected by a Bondsmage. His only hope is that the other Bastards will escape.

Barsavi leads a sobbing Locke into “Nazca’s” casket, which is filled with horse urine, just like the barrel Nazca’s body was in. Barsavi drops the casket into the Echo Hole in the center of the floor, which leads to an underground river channel.

The Gentlemen Bastards were sent to various temples to become initiates so they could learn the secrets and customs of each god. After a time, the Bastards fled, often staging their deaths.

One day in spring, none of the Bastards are visiting a temple. Jean is at sword practice, and the other Bastards are waiting for him on a pier. They’re approached by the Half-Crowns, children their own age who are apprentices in the Full Crowns gang. The Half-Crowns, led by Tesso, beat up the Bastards. The Bastards resolve to get revenge.

This continues all summer; sometimes Jean is present and sometimes not. Locke eventually comes up with a scheme: He will bait Tesso by pretending to be alone, while Jean lies in wait a few hundred feet away. Locke successfully does this, and Jean rows a boat furiously toward Locke and Tesso. Locke tells Tesso, “I don’t have to fight or run [...] I just have to keep you here [...] until Jean gets back” (425).