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my boy, brains and a big mouth. I planted my ass here thirteen years ago, and the pious suckers of Camorr have been feeding me coins ever since. Plus I’m famous from Emberlain to Tal Verrar, which is pleasant, though mostly I like the cold coinage.”
    “Isn’t it uncomfortable?” Locke asked, looking around at the sad innards of the temple. “Living here, never going out?”
    Chains chuckled. “This shabby little backstage is no more the full extent of my temple than your old home was really a graveyard. We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”
    “Then … you’re like … teasers.”
    “Perhaps, in the sense that a barrel of fire-oil is akin to a pinch of red pepper. And that’s why I paid for you, my boy, though you lack the good sense the gods gave a carrot. You lie like a floor tapestry. You’re more crooked than an acrobat’s spine. I could really make something of you, if I decided I could trust you.”
    His searching eyes rested once more on Locke, and the boy guessed that he was supposed to say something.
    “I’d like that,” he whispered. “What do I do?”
    “You can start by talking. I want to hear about what you did at Shades’ Hill; the shit you pulled to get your former master angry at you.”
    “But … you said you already knew everything.”
    “I do. But I want to hear it from you, plain and clear, and I want it right the first time, with no backtracking or parts left out. If you try to conceal anything that I know you should be mentioning, I’ll have no choice but to consider you a worthless waste of my trust—and you’re already wearing my response around your neck.”
    “Then where,” said Locke with only a slight catch in his voice, “do I start?”
    “We can begin with your most recent transgressions. There’s one law that the brothers and sisters of Shades’ Hill must never break, but your former master told me that you broke it twice and thought you were clever enough to get away with it.”
    Locke’s cheeks turned bright red, and he stared down at his fingers.
    “Tell me, Locke. The Thiefmaker said you arranged the murders of two other Shades’ Hill boys, and that he didn’t pick up on your involvement until the second was already done.” Chains steepled his fingers before his face and gazed calmly at the boy with the death-mark around his neck. “I want to know why you killed them, and I want to know how you killed them, and I want to hear it from your own lips. Right now .”

I
    AMBITION
“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

CHAPTER ONE
    THE DON SALVARA GAME
    1
    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