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.
“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.