The Book in Brief
The novel contains 16 numbered chapters divided into four parts. Flashback interludes appear between most chapters, and each is summarized separately below.
Prologue: The Boy Who Stole Too Much
The Thiefmaker tries to sell a troublesome orphan named Locke Lamora to Father Chains, the supposed blind priest of Perelandro. Locke is a brilliant thief but has violated the Secret Peace, caused a tavern to burn and accidentally arranged the deaths of two other children. Chains buys him, reveals that he secretly serves the nameless god of thieves and demands the full story.
Part One: Ambition
Chapter 1: The Don Salvara Game. Years later, Locke leads the Gentlemen Bastards: Jean Tannen, twins Calo and Galdo Sanza, and their apprentice Bug. They stage an attack in an alley so Don Lorenzo Salvara can “rescue” Locke, disguised as Emberlain merchant Lukas Fehrwight. Locke hints that Salvara’s rival is entering an enormously profitable deal, baiting the Don into asking for it himself.
Interlude: Locke Explains. Young Locke tells Chains how he tried to punish an older orphan named Veslin. Locke stole a valuable coin, planted it among Veslin’s possessions and falsely implied that Veslin had robbed the city watch. The Thiefmaker killed Veslin and his innocent roommate, Gregor. Chains forces Locke to acknowledge that clever intentions do not excuse consequences he failed to anticipate.
Chapter 2: Second Touch at the Teeth Show. As Fehrwight and his servant Graumann, Locke and Jean join Don and Doña Salvara at the Shifting Revel. Locke uses genuine political tension in Emberlain to support a false story about smuggling rare Austershalin brandy before civil war begins. Amid Camorr’s elaborate entertainments and a brutal shark fight, the Salvaras agree to finance the supposedly urgent venture.
Interlude: Locke Stays for Dinner. Chains begins replacing Locke’s street habits with the skills of a confidence artist. He explains that the Gentlemen Bastards must understand languages, manners, food, religion and money well enough to impersonate anyone. Locke meets Calo and Galdo properly and learns that belonging to Chains’s household requires cooperation rather than the ruthless independence encouraged by the Thiefmaker.
Chapter 3: Imaginary Men. Two masked “Midnighters” visit the Salvaras and identify Fehrwight as the legendary swindler called the Thorn of Camorr. They instruct the couple to continue investing so the Duke’s secret police can trap him. Afterward, the men remove their disguises: they are Locke and Calo. By warning the Salvaras about his own fraud, Locke turns their suspicion into proof that he can be trusted.
Interlude: The Last Mistake. Chains takes Locke to the criminal tavern called the Last Mistake and explains Capa Barsavi’s rise, the Secret Peace and the organization known as the Right People. Young Locke swears loyalty to Barsavi in a ceremony involving a shark’s tooth. Outside, Chains explains that the ritual’s supposed magic is another trick and privately instructs Locke to violate the Secret Peace whenever he can do so safely.
Part Two: Complication
Chapter 4: At the Court of Capa Barsavi. The Bastards sell minor stolen goods and pay Barsavi a tiny tithe, preserving their reputation as an unimpressive gang. At the Floating Grave, Barsavi’s daughter Nazca warns Locke that her terrified father has become obsessed with the Gray King’s murders. After torturing two innocent gang members, Barsavi announces that Locke must marry Nazca. Neither Locke nor Nazca wants the match, and Locke refuses to flee Camorr.
Interlude: The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse. Chains orders Locke and the Sanza twins to acquire a fresh corpse for the black alchemist Jessaline d’Aubart. Disguised as Perelandro’s initiates, they persuade officials to release a hanged criminal’s body for religious rites. They then stage an attempted robbery and collect charitable donations from outraged merchants, completing the assignment while making an additional profit.
Chapter 5: The Gray King. A magical mist overwhelms Locke after another meeting with the Salvaras. He awakens before the Gray King and the Falconer, a Bondsmage whose scorpion hawk has been spying on the Bastards. They know Locke is the Thorn and threaten his friends unless he impersonates the Gray King at a meeting with Barsavi. Locke returns home and prepares the gang to flee, but Barsavi immediately summons him.
Interlude: Jean Tannen. The newly orphaned Jean arrives at the temple and punches Locke after an insensitive remark about his parents. Chains demonstrates Jean’s mathematical ability and Locke’s limitations, restoring the grieving boy’s confidence while humbling Locke. The following night, the boys apologize. Locke gives Jean a stolen pair of spectacles and invites him to join the gang, beginning their lifelong friendship.
Chapter 6: Limitations. Barsavi shows Locke Nazca’s murdered body, delivered in a barrel of horse urine. Marks on her corpse reveal the Falconer’s involvement. Barsavi orders Locke and Jean to attend his meeting with the Gray King, trapping Locke between his enemy’s command and his Capa’s expectations. When Locke insults the summoned Bondsmage, the Falconer demonstrates his ability to seize control of Locke’s body and threatens the other Bastards.
Interlude: Brat Masterpieces. Chains describes the Bastards as his life’s work and tells Locke that eloquence cannot solve every danger. Since Locke is a poor fighter and Jean has natural ability, Chains sends Jean to train at the House of Glass Roses. There, Don Maranzalla provokes Jean’s temper, approves of his courage and begins teaching him among the building’s beautiful, blood-drinking Elderglass flowers.
Chapter 7: Out the Window. Locke obtains an emetic and antidote from Jessaline. He makes himself violently ill so Barsavi’s sons will leave him behind, then takes the antidote and escapes the Broken Tower by ladder with the other Bastards. Weak from vomiting but free of Barsavi’s escort, Locke prepares to assume the Gray King disguise while the Falconer’s hawk circles overhead.
Interlude: Up the River. Chains sends Locke to Villa Senziano to learn how ordinary farmers live and work. On the journey, he reveals that the village was once his home. Chains, Vandros and Don Maranzalla are its only surviving veterans from a disastrous military campaign. Locke’s practical apprenticeship is also a test of whether he can adapt when separated from familiar streets and companions.
Chapter 8: The Funeral Cask. Disguised as the Gray King, Locke meets Barsavi at the Echo Hole. The Falconer magically stops the Capa’s crossbow bolts, but Barsavi has been warned that the protection does not cover fists. His sons beat Locke savagely. Unable to reveal his identity without exposing the Bastards’ connection to a Bondsmage, Locke is sealed inside a urine-filled funeral cask and dropped into the underground canal.
Interlude: The Half-Crown War. During their temple apprenticeships, the young Bastards repeatedly clash with Tesso and the Half-Crowns. Outnumbered and regularly beaten, Locke devises a trap. He lets Tesso believe he has caught Locke alone, then keeps him talking until Jean arrives at speed. The episode establishes their enduring division of labour: Locke controls attention until Jean can control the fight.
Part Three: Revelation
Chapter 9: A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass. Doña Sofia tells her elderly friend Doña Vorchenza about the alleged Midnighters and the Thorn of Camorr. Vorchenza later questions her adopted son, Reynart, revealing that she is the Spider, Camorr’s true spymaster, and that Locke’s Midnighters were impostors. She plans to expose Fehrwight by inviting him to the Duke’s Day of Changes celebration at Raven’s Reach.
Interlude: The Schoolmaster of Roses. Jean’s training under Don Maranzalla continues. After trying several weapons, Jean is given a matched pair of weighted hatchets and immediately displays an instinctive affinity for them. The weapons become his Wicked Sisters, allowing his speed, strength and intelligence to compensate for Locke’s nearly complete lack of martial ability.
Chapter 10: Teeth Lessons. Jean and Bug rescue Locke from the cask while fighting off magically driven salt devils. Back at the temple, they find Calo and Galdo murdered and their fortune stolen. An assassin shoots Bug in the neck and magically paralyzes Jean using a severed hand bearing his name. Bug dies after Locke recognizes him as a full Gentleman Bastard. Locke and Jean burn their home with their brothers’ bodies inside and swear revenge.
Interlude: The Tale of the Old Handball Players. A Camorri story tells of a referee who denied his friend a disputed goal, causing a riot and ending their friendship. When they meet again thirty years later, the player stabs the referee and throws him into the sea. Outsiders consider the tale insane; Camorri consider it sensible advice never to forget an injury or postpone revenge.
Chapter 11: At the Court of Capa Raza. Locke infiltrates Barsavi’s victory celebration aboard the Floating Grave. During a staged shark fight, the Berangias sisters turn on the Capa, killing his sons while the shark tears Barsavi apart. The Gray King reveals the sisters are his siblings and claims the underworld as Capa Raza. Many gangs immediately submit. Locke escapes but collapses, while Raza’s supposed plague ship, the Satisfaction, waits offshore.
Interlude: The Lady of the Long Silence. As part of the Bastards’ religious training, Jean infiltrates Revelation House under the name Tavrin Callas and studies the rites of Aza Guilla, goddess of death. When a ritual poison loosens his tongue, the priests mistake his accidental revelations for divine favour. Jean escapes by faking Tavrin’s suicide, but accepts that he may genuinely serve death through the use of his hatchets.
Part Four: Desperate Improvisation
Chapter 12: The Fat Priest from Tal Verrar. Locke awakens after two days under the care of the unlicensed physician Ibelius, whose brother was killed in Raza’s coup. Jean has disguised himself as an Aza Guilla priest and discovered Raza’s men loading coin onto the quarantined Satisfaction. With their home, clothing and fortune gone, Locke needs money and a Fehrwight disguise before he can finish the Salvara game or attack Raza.
Interlude: The White Iron Conjurers. The history of the Meraggio countinghouse explains how a funeral-silk monopoly grew into the financial heart of the Therin city-states. Its head, Giancana Meraggio, possesses authority rivaling the Duke’s. The institution survives because people treat contracts, coins and appearances as forms of magic—exactly the kind of power Locke is best equipped to manipulate.
Chapter 13: Orchids and Assassins. After several failed disguises, Locke invents an assassination plot inside Meraggio’s countinghouse. He convinces servants that he is testing them, then tells Meraggio that an assassin recognizes the banker by his clothing. Meraggio surrenders his exquisite outfit so Locke can serve as a decoy. Properly dressed again, Locke releases an innocent waiter he implicated and resumes the Fehrwight identity.
Chapter 14: Three Invitations. The Salvaras invite Fehrwight to the Duke’s feast, where they plan to find more investors. Jean discovers Raza’s coin being transferred at the docks and is ambushed by the Berangias sisters. He kills both with the Wicked Sisters but suffers grave wounds. Meanwhile, Raza and the Falconer magically enslave Doña Vorchenza and force her to arrange an audience with the Duke for Raza and four mysterious statues.
Interlude: The Daughters of Camorr. The origins of Camorr’s independent brothels are recounted. Two sex workers killed and castrated their abusive pimp, beginning a conflict that ended with the city’s women controlling their own houses. The survivors divided into two organizations and established a lasting peace, another example of Camorri institutions being founded through carefully directed revenge.
Chapter 15: Spiderbite. At the Day of Changes feast, Vorchenza lures Locke into private chambers, reveals herself as the Spider and poisons him. Locke refuses to confess, strikes her, steals the antidote and escapes Raven’s Reach by leaping onto an exterior transport cage. When he reaches Ibelius’s refuge, the Falconer is waiting and has used Jean’s blood and true name to take control of him.
Interlude: The Throne in Ashes. The history of Therin Pel demonstrates why the Bondsmagi are feared. When the old empire tried to restrict their growing power and killed several mages, Karthain retaliated by annihilating the imperial capital in a firestorm. Only a throne remains amid the ashes, a warning that killing a Bondsmage can provoke vengeance from the entire order.
Chapter 16: Justice Is Red. The Falconer orders Jean to kill Locke, but his attempt to control Locke fails because “Locke” is not the thief’s true name. Locke kills the mage’s bonded hawk, and the Bastards sever his fingers and tongue before learning Raza’s history and plan. The four statues contain Wraithstone that will destroy the minds of Camorr’s assembled nobility and their children.
Locke returns to Raven’s Reach, convinces Vorchenza and the Salvaras of the danger and helps evacuate the tower. He persuades the Spider to sink the Satisfaction, claiming it carries plague animals. Locke then confronts Raza on the Floating Grave. Hopelessly outmatched, he pretends Jean is approaching and uses Raza’s distraction to stab him. Jean arrives moments later and carries the dying Locke to safety.
Interlude: A Minor Prophecy. Years earlier, Chains predicted that Locke would someday fail so magnificently and ambitiously that even the gods would be impressed. Teenage Locke confidently insisted that such a disaster would never happen. His ruined gang, destroyed fortune, saved city and barely survived revenge fulfil every part of Chains’s prophecy.
Epilogue: Falselight. The mutilated Falconer is sent to Vorchenza for return to Karthain. Vorchenza chooses the Salvaras as her eventual successors in the office of Spider. Locke reveals that Raza’s treasure was aboard the Satisfaction: by tricking the authorities into burning it, he made an enormous death-offering to his murdered friends. Locke, Jean and Ibelius leave Camorr by ship, and Locke finally whispers his true name to Jean.
About the Book
Published in 2006, The Lies of Locke Lamora is Scott Lynch’s debut novel and the first book in the Gentleman Bastard series. It is followed by Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves.