Character Analysis
What a Tricksy Fellow
Count Las Bombas is a man who makes his money as a trickster, so it's only appropriate that when Theo first meets him he's fleeing from the police. He puts together schemes meant to beguile audiences out of their hard earned cash money… but the "services" he provides aren't exactly truthful. When he conducts the Oracle Priestess skit, for instance—spoiler alert—Mickle doesn't actually speak from the beyond (go figure), but just pretends to do so. LB pretends to be everything from a general to an alchemist to get a dollar… or three.
What makes Las Bombas and his schemes so believable? For one, he claims to have all sorts of mystical knowledge from exotic people and lands—like the Grand Copt and Trebizonia—so even if people claim he's a fake, he can just say they haven't obtained the level of knowledge he has. When no one else has been to Trebizonia, they can't really claim to know for sure that what you learned there is false, after all. Plus he puffs himself up to look really impressive—this guy's a total character—and he speaks eloquently of topics people don't know much about.
In other words, Las Bombas is a successful con man because he's so, well, confident about everything he puts out there. (Con man is short for confidence man, in case you didn't know.)
At his core, Las Bombas is greedy, so it's only by accident that he ends up fulfilling King Augustine's greatest desire by bringing the monarch his long-lost daughter, Mickle. And after doing so, he shamelessly exploits the king's love for his child by asking for a reward (hey, he never meant to help in the first place, so…).
When he loses this money, he comes back for more, and attempts to steal Skeit's own coins out from under him. He is prevented from doing so by Skeit's own cleverness, though, and when this happens, we see that LB is a trickster who can totally be tricked in his own right—not that we think that'll shatter his confidence going forward or anything, though.
Not a Real Bad Boy
As it turns out, Las Bombas isn't entirely a bad dude. While he wanders around tricking people, he also saved Musket from being exploited by some monstrous people who ran what's called a beggar factory. Check out Musket's tale of being saved by LB:
"What if it is? I'll hear nothing against the man who bought me. That's right," Musket went on. "How much he paid, or if he swindled them out of the price, I don't know or care. I was half your age. In Napolita. He bought me from the beggar factory."
"From the—what?"
"Beggar factory," the dwarf said cheerfully. "No, you wouldn't have heard of that in your little hole-and-corner. But you've never wondered why there's so many beggars? Oh, there's no shortage of first-rate paupers, lame, halt, and blind. But half your noseless, or legless, or hunchbacked—they've been custom-tailored for the trade. Youngsters bought or stolen, then broken past mending, sliced up, squeezed into jars to make them grow crooked. Sold off to a master who pockets whatever charity's thrown to them."
"That's horrible. It can't be true."
"Can't be," said Musket. "But is. I was lucky. I was born like this, no adjustments required. If it hadn't been the count who bought me, no telling where I'd be. Rascal he is, but he's a good-natured one. Take your nobles who flog their servants, gouge their tenants, or the judges who send some wretch to be hanged—they're honest as the day is long. Any scoundrel can be honest." (6.23-27)
No matter what pesky deeds he does, one thing's certain: Las Bombas also saved Musket's life. His redeeming acts don't stop there, either, since he also brings Theo aboard when Big T is on the run from the police, and he added Mickle to his team. While each of these folks certainly earns their keep in terms of LB's cause to swindle the world, it's also undeniable that by bringing them into his fold, Las Bombas keeps them off the streets, giving them much needed money and food. In other words, he might be tricky, but he's definitely not amoral.