The Lies of Locke Lamora

by Scott Lynch

  INTERLUDE

  The Throne in Ashes

  Therim Pel was once called the Jewel of the Eldren; it was the largest and grandest of the cities that the lost race of ancients left to the men who claimed their lands long after their disappearance.

  Therim Pel sat at the headwaters of the Angevine River, where they poured in a white torrent from the mountains; it sat beneath their craggy majesty and was surrounded by rich fields for two days’ ride by fast horse in any other direction. In the autumn, those fields would be swaying with stalks of amber-a bounty fit for the seat of an empire, which Therim Pel was.

  All the cities of the south knelt before the Therin Throne. The engineers of the empire built tens of thousands of miles of roads to weave those cities together. The empire’s generals manned them with patrols to put bandits down, and maintained garrisons at smaller towns and villages to ensure that commerce and letters could flow, without interruption, from one end of the empire to the other-from the Iron Sea to the Sea of Brass.

  Karthain and Lashain, Nessek and Talisham, Espara and Ashmere, Iridain and Camorr, Balinel and Issara-all those mighty city-states were ruled by dukes who took their crowns of silver from the hands of the emperor himself. The few dukes who remain in present times may wield great power, but they are self-declared; the high lineages dating back to the time of the Therin Throne have long been severed.

  The Therin Throne entered into decline when the Vadrans appeared from the north. A raiding sea-people, they took the Throne protectorates on the northern half of the continent; they named the seven great rivers that flowed to the northern sea their Seven Holy Marrows, and they discouraged the Throne’s efforts to reclaim its territory by smashing every army it sent north. Weakened, the Therin Throne could not sustain the effort, and so it was diminished. Diminished, but not broken.

  It took the Bondsmagi of Karthain to do that.

  The Bondsmagi were newly formed in the city of Karthain; they were beginning to expand the reach of their unique and deadly guild to other cities, and they showed little sign of catering to the angry demands of the emperor in Therim Pel. He insisted that they halt their activities, and they are said to have replied with a short letter listing the prices for which His August Majesty could hire their services. The emperor sent in his own royal circle of sorcerers; they were slain without exception. The emperor then raised his legions and marched on Karthain, vowing to slay every sorcerer who claimed the title of Bondsmage.

  The emperor’s declaration of war was a test of resolve for the new guild’s rules. For anyone who dared to harm a Bondsmage, they had publicly vowed reciprocity that would be awful to behold.

  During his march to Karthain, the emperor’s soldiers managed to kill about a dozen.

  Four hundred Bondsmagi met the emperor’s legions just to the east of Karthain; the sorcerers condescended to offer a pitched battle. In less than two hours, one-third of the emperor’s forces were slaughtered. Strange mists boiled up from the ground to mislead their maneuvers; illusions and phantasms tormented them. Flights of arrows halted in the air and fell to the ground, or were hurled back upon the archers who had loosed them. Comrade turned upon comrade, maddened and misled by sorcery that could chain a man’s actions as though he were a marionette. The emperor himself was hacked to pieces by his personal guard. It is said that no piece larger than a finger remained to be burned on a pyre afterward. The empire was soundly defeated-its surviving generals routed, their remaining soldiers scampering like message-runners for Therim Pel.

  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 sl
eeping 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.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. You may move again.” And as he spoke, it was so; the paralysis lifted, and Locke twitched his fingers experimentally. The Bondsmage wiggled his silver thread once more; Locke felt a strange something seem to form in the air around him, a sort of pressure, and the parchment glowed again.

  “Now,” said the Falconer. “I name your name, Locke. I name your given name, the truthful name, the name of the spirit. I name your name, Locke. Arise. Arise and take up Jean Tannen’s hatchets. Arise and kill Jean Tannen.”

  Locke pushed himself up to his knees and rested on his hands for a moment.

  “Kill Jean Tannen.”

  Shaking, he reached out for one of Jean’s hatchets, slid it toward himself, and crawled forward with it clutched in his right hand. His breathing was ragged; Jean Tannen lay at the Bondsmage’s heels, just three or four feet away, on his face in the plaster dust of the hovel.

  “Kill Jean Tannen.”

  Locke paused at the Falconer’s feet and turned his head slowly to stare at Jean. One of the big man’s eyes was open, unblinking; there was real terror there. Jean’s lips quivered uselessly, trying to form words.

  Locke pushed himself up and raised the hatchet; he bellowed wordlessly.

  He jabbed up with the heavy ball of the hatchet; the blow struck home right between the Falconer’s legs. The silver thread and the parchment fluttered from the Bondsmage’s hands as he gasped and fell forward, clutching at his groin.

  Locke whirled to his right, expecting instant attack from the scorpion hawk, but to his surprise the bird had fallen from its perch and was writhing on the hovel floor, wings beating uselessly at the air, a series of choked half screeches issuing from its beak.

  Locke smiled the cruelest smile he’d ever worn in his entire life as he rose to his feet.

  “It’s like that, is it?” He grinned fiercely at the Bondsmage as he slowly raised the hatchet, ball-side down. “You see what she sees; each of you feels what the other feels?”

  The words brought him a warm sense of exultation, but they nearly cost him the fight; the Falconer managed to find concentration enough to utter one syllable and curl his fingers into claws. Locke gasped and staggered back, nearly dropping the hatchet. It felt as though a hot dagger had been shoved through both of his kidneys; the sizzling pain made it impossible to act, or even to think.

  The Falconer attempted to stand up, but Jean Tannen suddenly rolled toward him and reached up, grabbing him by the lapels. The big man yanked hard, and the Falconer crashed back down, forehead-first, against the floor of the hovel. The pain in Locke’s guts vanished, and Vestris screeched once again from the floor beside his feet. He wasted no further time.

  He whipped the hatchet down in a hammer-blow, breaking Vestris’ left wing with a dry crack.

  The Falconer screamed and writhed, flailing hard enough to briefly break free from Jean’s grasp. He clutched at his left arm and hollered, his eyes wide with shock. Locke kicked him in the face, hard, and the Bondsmage rolled over in the dust, spitting up the blood that was suddenly running from his nose.

  “Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker,” said Locke. “I’ll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn’t know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded.

  “But what the fuck,” he said slowly, “ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with?”

  He raised the hatchet again, reversed it so the blade side was toward the ground, and then brought it down with all of his strength, severing Vestris’ head completely from her body.

  The sound of the bird’s suddenly interrupted screech echoed and merged with the screams of the Falconer, who clutched at his head and kicked his legs wildly. His cries were pure madness, and it was a mercy to the ears of Locke and Jean when they died, and he fell sobbing into unconsciousness.

  2

  THE FALCONER of Karthain awoke to find himself lying spread-eagled, arms and legs out on the dusty floor of the hovel. The smell of blood was in the air-Vestris’ blood. He closed his eyes and began to weep.

  “He is secure, Master Lamora,” said Ibelius. When the dog-leech had awoken from whatever spell the Bondsmage had flung at him, he’d been only too eager to help tie the Karthani down. He and Jean had scavenged some metal stakes from the other side of the structure; these were pounded into the floor, and the Bondsmage was lashed to them by long strips of bedding, tied tight around his wrists and ankles. Smaller strips had been tied around his fingers and had been used to pad between them, immobil
izing them.

  “Good,” said Locke.

  Jean Tannen sat on the sleeping pallet, looking down at the Bondsmage with dull, deeply shadowed eyes. Locke stood at the sorceror’s feet, staring down at him with undisguised loathing.

  A small oil fire burned in a glass jar; Ibelius crouched beside it, slowly heating a dagger over it. The thin brown smoke curled up toward the ceiling.

  “You are fools,” said the Falconer between sobs, “if you think to kill me. My brethren will take satisfaction; think on the consequences.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” said Locke. “I’m going to play a little game I like to call ‘scream in pain until you answer my fucking questions.’”

  “Do what you will” said the Falconer. “The code of my order forbids me to betray my client.”

  “Oh, you’re not working for your client anymore, asshole,” said Locke. “You’re not working for your client ever again.”

  “It’s ready, Master Lamora,” said Ibelius.

  The Bondsmage craned his neck to stare over at Ibelius. He swallowed and licked his lips, his wet, bloodshot eyes darting around the room.

  “What’s the matter?” Locke reached out and carefully took the dagger from the dog-leech’s hand; its blade glowed red. “Afraid of fire? Why ever should that be?” Locke grinned, an expression utterly without humor.

  “Fire’s the only thing that’s going to keep you from bleeding to death.”

  Jean rose from the sleeping pallet and knelt on the Falconer’s left arm. He pressed it down at the wrist, and Locke slowly came over to stand beside him, hatchet in one hand and glowing knife in the other.

  “I heartily approve, in theory,” said Ibelius, “but in practice I believe I shall…absent myself.”

  “By all means, Master Ibelius,” said Locke.