But the affair did not end there. The Bondsmagi in conclave decided to enforce their rules, and to enforce them in such a fashion that the entire world would shudder at the thought of crossing them, for as long as men might have memories.
They worked their retribution on the city of Therim Pel.
The firestorm they conjured was unnatural. Four hundred magi, working in concert, kindled something at the heart of the empire that historians still fear to describe. It is said that the flames were as white as the hearts of the stars themselves; that the column of black smoke rose so high it could be seen from the deep Iron Sea, far east of Camorr, and as far north as Vintila, capital of the young Kingdom of the Seven Marrows.
Even this hideous conjuring could not touch Elderglass; those structures in the city built by Eldren arts survived unscathed. But everything else the fire touched, it ate; wood and stone and metal, mortar and paper and living things. All the city’s buildings and all the city’s culture and all the city’s population who could not flee before the magi began their work were burnt into a desert of gray ashes-a desert that settled a foot deep across a black scar baked into the ground.
Those ashes swirled in the hot wind at the foot of the one human-crafted object the magi willingly preserved: the throne of the empire. That chair remains there to this day, in the haunted city of Therim Pel, surrounded by a field of ashes that time and rains have turned into a sort of black concrete. Nothing grows in Therim Pel anymore; no sensible man or woman will set foot within that black monument to the resolve of the Bondsmagi of Karthain.
It was they who broke the Therin Throne with that unearthly fire; they who cast the city-states of the south into hundreds of years of warring and feuding while the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows grew powerful in the north.
It is that image that comes to mind when most men think to cross a Bondsmage-the image of an empty chair standing alone in a dry sea of desolation.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN . JUSTICE IS RED
1
THE FALCONER MOVED his fingers, and Locke Lamora fell to his knees, gripped by an all-too-familiar pain that burned within his bones. He toppled onto the floor of the hovel, beside Jean.
“What a pleasure,” said the sorcerer, “to see that you survived our little arrangement at the Echo Hole. I am impressed. Even despite your reputation, I had imagined we were too clever for you. Only this afternoon I thought it was Jean Tannen alone that I sought; but this is something finer by far.”
“You,” spat Locke, “are a twisted fucking animal.”
“No,” said the Bondsmage, “I obey the orders of my paying client. And my orders are to make sure the murderer of my client’s sisters takes his time in dying.” The Falconer cracked his knuckles. “You I regard as a windfall.”
Locke screamed and reached out toward the Bondsmage, willing himself forward through the pain, but the Falconer muttered under his breath, and the racking, stabbing sensations seemed to multiply tenfold. Locke flopped onto his back and tried to breathe, but the muscles behind and beneath his lungs were as solid as stones.
When the Bondsmage released him from this torment, he slumped down, gasping. The room spun.
“It’s very strange,” said the Falconer, “how the evidence of our victories can become the instruments of our downfall. Jean Tannen, for example-you must be a fantastic fighter to have taken my client’s sisters, though I see you suffered in doing so. And now they’ve struck back at you from the shadelands. A great many divinations are possible when one of my kind can get his hands on the physical residue of another man-fingernail parings, for example. Locks of hair. Blood on the edge of a knife.”
Jean groaned, unable to speak from pain.
“Oh, yes,” said the Falconer. “I was certainly surprised to see who that blood led me to. In your shoes, I’d have been in the first caravan to the other side of the continent. You might even have been left in peace.”
“Gentlemen Bastards,” hissed Locke, “do not abandon one another, and we do not run when we owe vengeance.”
“That’s right,” said the Bondsmage. “And that’s why they also die at my feet in filthy fucking hovels like this one.”
Vestris fluttered from his shoulder and settled into another corner of the room, staring balefully down at Locke, twitching her head from side to side in excitement. The Falconer reached inside his coat and drew out a sheet of parchment, a quill, and a small bottle of ink. He uncapped the bottle and set it down atop the sleeping pallet; he wet the quill and smiled down at Locke.
“Jean Tannen,” said the Falconer. “What a simple name; easy to write. Easier even than it was to stitch.”
His quill flew across the parchment; he wrote in great looping whorls, and his smile grew with every letter. When he was finished, his silver thread snaked out around the fingers of his left hand, and he moved them with an almost hypnotic rhythm. A pale silver glow arose from the page in his hands, outlining the curves of his face.
“Jean Tannen,” said the Falconer. “Arise, Jean Tannen. I have a task for you.”
Shuddering, Jean rose first to his knees and then to his feet. He stood before the Falconer; Locke, for his part, still found it impossible to move.
“Jean Tannen,” said the Bondsmage, “take up your hatchets. Nothing would please you more at this moment than to take up your hatchets.”
Jean reached beneath the sleeping pallet and took out the Wicked Sisters; he slipped one into either hand, and the corners of his mouth drew upward.
“You like to use those, don’t you, Jean?” The Falconer shifted the silver threads in his left hand. “You like to feel them biting into flesh… You like to see the blood spatter. Oh, yes…don’t worry. I have a task you can set them to.”
With the sheet of paper in his right hand, the Falconer gestured down at Locke.
“Kill Locke Lamora,” he said.
Jean shuddered; he took a step toward Locke, then hesitated. He frowned and closed his eyes.
“I name your given name, Jean Tannen,” said the Bondsmage. “I name your given name, the truthful name, the name of the spirit. I name your name. Kill Locke Lamora. Take up your hatchets and kill Locke Lamora.”
Jean took another halting step toward Locke; his hatchets rose slowly. He seemed to be clenching his jaws. A tear rolled out of his right eye; he took a deep breath, and then another step. He sobbed, and raised the Wicked Sisters above his shoulders.
“No,” said the Falconer. “Oh, no. Wait. Step back.”
Jean obliged, backing off a full yard from Locke, who sent up silent prayers of relief, mingled with dread for whatever might come next.
“Jean’s rather soft-hearted,” said the Falconer, “but you’re the real weakling, aren’t you? You’re the one who begged me to do anything to you as long as I left your friends alone; you’re the one who went into the barrel with his lips closed when he could have betrayed his friends, and perhaps lived. I know how to make this right. Jean Tannen, drop your hatchets.”
The Wicked Sisters hit the ground with a heavy thud, bounced, and landed just beside Locke’s eyes. A moment later, the Bondsmage spoke in his sorcerous tongue and shifted the threads in his left hand; Jean screamed and fell to the ground, shaking feebly.
“It would be much better, I think,” said the Falconer, “if you were to kill Jean, Master Lamora.”
Vestris screeched down at Locke; the sound had the strange mocking undertones of laughter.
Oh, fuck, Locke thought. Oh, gods.
“Of course,” said the Falconer, “we already know your last name is a sham. But I don’t need a full name; even a fragment of a true name will be quite enough. You’ll see, Locke. I promise that you’ll see.” His silver threads disappeared; he dipped his quill once again and wrote briefly on the parchment.