“Now that won’t do either, Locke. Surely you must have realized I can’t be one of Barsavi’s men.”
Thirteen, Locke thought. Where the hell did I make a mistake? If the man was speaking truthfully, if he didn’t work for Capa Barsavi, there was only one other possibility. The real Spider. The real Midnighters. Had Locke’s use of the pretend sigil-wallet been reported? Had that counterfeiter in Talisham decided to try for a bit of extra profit by dropping a word with the duke’s secret constables? It seemed the likeliest explanation.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
Locke stood up and did so, and bit his tongue to avoid crying out in surprise.
The man seated at the table before him could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty; he was lean and rangy and gray at the temples. The mark of Camorr was upon his face; he bore the sun-darkened olive skin, the high temples and cheekbones, the sharp nose.
He wore a gray leather doublet over a gray silk tunic; his cloak and mantle were gray, as was the hood that was swept back behind his head. His hands, folded neatly before him, were covered with thin gray swordsman’s gloves, kid leather that was weathered and creased with use. The man had hunter’s eyes, cold and steady and measuring. The orange light of the lantern was reflected in their dark pupils. For a second it seemed to Locke that he was seeing not a reflection but a revelation; that the dark fire burned behind the man’s eyes. Locke shivered despite himself… All that gray…
“You,” he whispered, dropping the accent of Lukas Fehrwight.
“None other,” said the Gray King. “I disdain these clothes as something of a theatrical touch, but it’s a necessary one. Of all the men in Camorr, surely you understand these things, Master Thorn.”
“I have no idea why you keep calling me that,” said Locke, shifting his footing as unobtrusively as he could, feeling the comforting weight of his second stiletto in the other sleeve of his coat. “And I don’t see this crossbow you mentioned.”
“I said it was at your back.” The Gray King gestured at the far wall with a thin, bemused smile. Warily, Locke turned his head-
There was a man standing against the wall of the tavern, standing right in the spot Locke had been staring at until the previous moment. A cloaked and hooded man, broad-shouldered, leaning lazily against the wall with a loaded alley-piece in the crook of his arm, the quarrel pointed casually at Locke’s chest.
“I…” Locke turned back, but the Gray King was no longer seated at the table. He was standing a dozen feet away, to Locke’s left, behind the disused bar. The lantern on the table hadn’t moved, and Locke could see that the man was grinning. “This isn’t possible.”
“Of course it is, Master Thorn. Think it through. The number of possibilities is actually vanishingly small.”
The Gray King waved his left hand in an arc, as though wiping a window; Locke glanced back at the wall and saw that the crossbowman had disappeared once again.
“Well, fuck me,” said Locke. “You’re a Bondsmage.”
“No,” said the Gray King, “I’m a man without that advantage, no different than yourself. But I employ a Bondsmage.” He pointed to the table where he’d previously been sitting.
There, without any sudden movement or jump in Locke’s perception, sat a slender man surely not yet out of his twenties. His chin and cheeks were peach-fuzzed, and his hairline was already in rapid retreat to the back of his head. His eyes were alight with amusement, and Locke immediately saw in him the sort of casual presumption of authority that most congenital bluebloods wore like a second skin.
He was dressed in an extremely well-tailored gray coat with flaring red silk cuffs; the bare skin of his left wrist bore three tattooed black lines. On his right hand was a heavy leather gauntlet, and perched atop this, staring at Locke as though he were nothing more than a field mouse with delusions of grandeur, was the fiercest hunting hawk Locke had ever seen. The bird of prey stared directly at him, its eyes pinpoints of black within gold on either side of a curved beak that looked dagger-sharp. Its brown-and-gray wings were folded back sleekly, and its talons-what was wrong with its talons? Its rear claws were huge, distended, oddly lengthened.
“My associate, the Falconer,” said the Gray King. “A Bondsmage of Karthain. My Bondsmage. The key to a great many things. And now that we’ve been introduced, let us speak of what I expect you to do for me.”
4
“THEY ARE not to be fucked with,” Chains had told him once, many years before.
“Why not?” Locke was twelve or thirteen at the time, about as cocksure as he’d ever be in life, which was saying something.
“I see you’ve been neglecting your history again. I’ll assign you more reading shortly.” Chains sighed. “The Bondsmagi of Karthain are the only sorcerers on the continent, because they permit no one else to study their art. Outsiders they find must join them or be slain.”
“And none resist? Nobody fights back or hides from them?”
“Of course they do, here and there. But what can two or five or ten sorcerers in hiding do against four hundred with a city-state at their command? What the Bondsmagi do to outsiders and renegades…They make Capa Barsavi look like a priest of Perelandro. They are utterly jealous, utterly ruthless, and utterly without competition. They have achieved their desired monopoly. No one will shelter sorcerers against the will of the Bondsmagi, no one. Not even the King of the Seven Marrows.”
“Curious,” said Locke, “that they would still call themselves Bondsmagi, then.”
“It’s false modesty. I think it amuses them. They set such ridiculous prices for their services, it’s less like mercenary work to them and more like a cruel joke at the expense of their clients.”
“Ridiculous prices?”
“A novice would cost you five hundred crowns a day. A more experienced spellbinder might cost you a thousand. They mark their rank with tattoos around their wrists. The more black circles you see, the more polite you become.”
“A thousand crowns a day?”
“You see now why they’re not everywhere, on retainer to every court and noble and pissant warlord with a treasury to waste. Even in times of war and other extreme crises, they can be secured for a very limited duration. When you do cross paths with one, you can be sure that the client is paying them for serious, active work.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Karthain.”
“Ha-ha. I mean their guild. Their monopoly.”
“That’s easy. One night a powerful sorcerer knocks on the door of a less-powerful sorcerer. ‘I’m starting an exclusive guild,’ he says. ‘Join me now or I’ll blast you out of your fucking boots right where you stand.’ So naturally the second mage says…”
“‘You know, I’ve always wanted to join a guild!’”
“Right. Those two go bother a third sorcerer. ‘Join the guild,’ they say, ‘or fight both of us, two on one, right here and right now.’ Repeat as necessary, until three or four hundred guild members are knocking on the door of the last independent mage around, and everyone who said no is dead.”
“They must have weaknesses,” said Locke.
“Of course they’ve got weaknesses, boy. They’re mortal men and women, same as us. They eat, they shit, they age, they die. But they’re like gods-damned hornets; mess with one and the rest show up to punch you full of holes. Thirteen help anyone who kills a Bondsmage, purposely or otherwise.”
“Why?”
“It’s the oldest rule of their guild, a rule without exceptions: kill a Bondsmage, and the whole guild drops whatever it’s doing to come after you. They seek you out by any means they need to use. They kill your friends, your family, your associates. They burn your home. They destroy everything you’ve ever built. Before they finally let you die, they make sure you know that your line has been wiped from the earth, root and branch.”