The Emperor's blades

15

“A true Kettral,” Adaman Fane bellowed, his voice loud enough to be heard on shore a thousand paces distant, “is not afraid of the water.”

A dozen cadets stood on the deck as the Night’s Edge rocked gently with the waves. Gwenna scowled through the introductory lecture, grimy and irritated, no doubt, at having been yanked away from her bombs. Yurl smiled that sly, superior smile of his, as though Fane and the rest of them were just servants waiting on his pleasure. Balendin leaned against one of the rails, eyes hooded. He twisted one of the iron rings on his fingers as his hawk flew overhead. It was an odd exercise, and Valyn knew he should be paying attention to the instructor, but he couldn’t help sneaking surreptitious glances at Annick.

The sniper was thin and gangly, tall for her age, but not so tall as Valyn. Her thin arms didn’t look like they had the strength to draw a longbow, but cords of muscle shifted beneath the skin whenever she moved, and Valyn had watched her put an arrow through a lemon at three hundred paces. None of the other cadets on the Islands could manage that. Neither could most of the real Kettral snipers, for that matter. Blackfeather Finn claimed she was the best hand with a bow he’d ever seen, at least at her age.

She didn’t look like a flint-hearted killer. At first glance, she actually looked more like a farmer’s daughter than a soldier: dusty brown hair flopped over her forehead and flicked out behind her ears, all cut short enough to avoid tangling in her bowstring. She had a sharp nose and sharp chin, both a little too small for her sun-browned face, but not so much that you’d notice if you weren’t paying attention. She looked normal, harmless. That is, until you caught a glimpse of her eyes. As Valyn studied her, she glanced over suddenly, as if she’d felt his gaze. Those blue eyes were cold as fish scale.

“A true Kettral,” Fane continued, “embraces the water. It is his home, just as the air is his home. What we will discover today is whether you are at home in the water. Or whether you panic when the waves press down.” He looked over the assembled group. “Who wants to embarrass himself first? You’re all going to suffer. It’s only a question of when.”

Valyn broke away from Annick’s stare, hesitated, then stepped forward. “I’ll go.”

“Ah, the Light of the Empire stepping up to lead his feeble subjects by his own bold example.”

Valyn ignored the gibe. “What do you want me to do?”

“You?” Fane asked. “I don’t want you to do anything.” He scanned the cadets. “Annick, get over here.”

As the sniper stepped forward, the trainer produced a lead weight twice the size of Valyn’s head, and a length of stout rope. Fane dropped the weight on the deck with an audible thump, and handed the rope to Annick. Valyn felt his muscles tighten and willed himself calm. It’s just an exercise, he told himself. Whatever happened up in that garret, this is just training.

“You idiots have done this drill before,” Fane continued, “but always in shallow harbor water. Today we’ll find out if you’re ready to swim with the sharks. Go ahead,” he said, turning to Annick, but she had already started.

With quick, confident motions, she looped the rope around Valyn’s ankles once, twice, three times, cinching it so tight on each pass that he started to lose feeling in his feet before she was finished. She looked up as she worked, ice blue eyes drilling into him, but said nothing before returning to her task, threading the rope through the large eyelet in the anchor, then twisting it over and over and back on itself. Valyn tried to see what sort of knot she was tying out of the corner of his eye, but Fane cuffed him across the face.

“When I want you to cheat, I’ll tell you,” he said curtly.

Valyn raised his eyes to find Balendin watching him from a few paces away. “Good luck down there, O Noble Prince,” the youth smirked. “I hope today’s drill works out better for you than our little scuffle last week.”

Valyn felt the blood rise to his head, and he started to take a step forward, before remembering that Annick had lashed his ankles together. He teetered, straining against the bonds, before the sniper drove a vicious fist into the back of his knees, dropping him to the deck.

“He’s done,” she said, turning to Fane as she straightened.

“That was quick,” the trainer replied. “I hope you didn’t go too easy on him.”

“He’s done,” she repeated, then stepped away, evidently indifferent to the outcome.

Fane shrugged. “You heard her. Over the rail with him, then.”

A dozen hands gripped Valyn, hoisting him into the air. He tried to turn himself upright, to get his bearings before they tossed him from the ship, but Sami Yurl had his head, and the blond youth grinned down at him before twisting it so sharply Valyn thought his neck would break. He ground out a low, angry curse and then, the next moment, he was free, free and falling, thrashing wildly before he slammed down into the water.

He managed to suck in a quick breath, catch a glimpse of the dark hull of the vessel, and then the leash on his ankle was pulling him beneath the chop. He clamped his lips shut. He’d hit at an odd angle, but the lead weight would straighten him out. Now it was time to avoid drowning.

The water, pleasantly cool on the ocean’s surface, grew colder as he sank. He tilted his head back, straining to see the sun, but the dozens of feet of murk above him had dulled its blaze to a fickle, sullen glow. Even here, barely a quarter mile off the coast, the ocean was deep enough to swallow a whole sailing vessel, masts and all. The weight of it pressed down on him until he could feel the pain piercing his ears, the pressure against his eyes, the full tons of seawater piled on the heart laboring in his chest, slowly crushing it into submission. And still he sank.

The urge to free himself and stroke for the surface was strong, but he thrust it down. Quit being an ass, he told himself harshly. You’ve been under less than a minute, and you’re already starting to twitch. He knew well enough what to expect from the shallow-water versions of the exercise. The knots binding the anchor to his ankles would be complex and difficult to untie under the best of circumstances; they would be impossible to loose with the weight of the metal still dragging on them. He had to wait until his feet touched the bottom, had to gain some purchase on the ocean floor that would allow him to put enough slack into the ropes to work the knots free. To struggle with them now would be a waste of air, and Valyn could not afford to waste air.

Instead, he counted his heartbeats, trying to slow them as he’d been trained. Higher heart rate meant less air, and if he could still that hammering in his chest, he might gain himself the extra seconds necessary to live through the ordeal. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three … If anything, they seemed to be coming faster, but Valyn kept counting. Not much else to do down here, he reflected grimly.

At twenty-nine, he felt the ropes binding his legs go slack, then tighten again more gently. That was it-the ocean floor. It didn’t look like much-nothing looked like much this far below the surface, just a world of blue-black forms and murky shadows-but he could make out the jagged shapes of a few large rocks. In a practiced motion he folded at the waist, grasped the cord around his ankles, and, neatly inverted, pulled himself the last few feet to the silty bottom. It was easy enough to wedge his hip between the rocks, and then he went to work on the knots.

The rope was the thickness of his thumb, supple, the kind that coiled easily on a deck and felt good to work between the fingers. Annick had cinched the knots as tight as possible, however, and they had swollen with water during the long, slow plunge to the bottom. Valyn forced himself to go slowly, to test the rope with his fingers, to work through the various loops and twists. The mistake most people made was to just start tugging and pulling before they understood the knot. That was a good way to stay tied up, a good way to drown.

Double bowline, he realized, his heart beating a little faster with anticipation. Bowlines were easy to loose, even when they’d been doused and pulled tight. Maybe Annick had gone easy on him. He should be able to just … no. Valyn gritted his teeth. Of course it wasn’t easy. The damn thing was a bowline all right, but the bitter end was wrapped up in some bastard of a follow-through that Valyn didn’t recognize. If he’d gone about trying to loose it in the standard way, he would have fouled the thing up past all hope of retrieval. You’re a lucky shit for noticing it, he told himself, but he didn’t feel lucky. He’d been under for more than a minute, the air was starting to burn in his lungs, and what he felt was the first prick of the sharp claws of fear. Annick’s eyes, hard as chips of flint, filled his mind-those eyes and the memory of the slaughtered girl in the garret.

Slowly, he reminded himself as he traced the devious loop between his thumb and forefinger. Do it once and do it right. The coil looped back on itself once, twice, disappeared down through the loop until it came out.… He felt an icy sickness lurch in his gut. Even in the blackness, even beneath the tons of water, he knew what kind of knot he was facing now: a double bowline with the extra loops, just like the knot that had bound Amie as she died. It was another piece to the puzzle, but he forced it out of his mind. If he died here at the bottom of the bay, his discovery would die with him.

Fathoms of water pressed down on him like an anvil. The low burn in his lungs had become a fire. There’s still time, he told himself, clamping down on the animal panic. Think about what it means later. Just get it untied.

His abdomen had started to spasm, the muscles of his chest and stomach trying to override his brain, to haul in more air where there was no air to be had. Valyn closed his eyes-they weren’t doing him any good down here anyway-and tried to concentrate on the knot. The first loop came free with a reluctant lurch, but there were two more to go.

Stars started to fill his vision, stars that had no business on the bottom of the ocean. He felt his heart lunge again, like a panicked horse stabled in a burning barn. He was getting the knot, but too slowly. Once the stars started, there wasn’t much time left, not more than a dozen or so heartbeats. It would take him that long to return to the surface. The thought of the icy water sliding into his lungs and strangling him filled his brain, and he lost the bitter end of the rope. Shapes swam around him, sinister shapes circling and drawing closer. Sharks, Valyn realized, and clawed frantically at the knot. It was the wrong response. Even if there had been time left, which there wasn’t, that kind of desperate action would only tighten the bonds digging into his ankles. You idiot, he cursed himself, trying once more to find the loops, to make sense of them as his mind went dull and the blood blazed in his veins, in his heart. You stupid, ’Kent-kissing idiot.

Darkness closed around him, cold, and black, and limitless as the sea.

* * *

He awoke on the deck of the Night’s Edge, heaving a vile mixture of salt water and hardtack into the scupper. Another spasm brought up a second lungful of the briny muck, and then another, and another. He felt like someone had been at his ribs with their bare knuckles. His head throbbed, and each breath dragged gravel through his lungs. So the black shapes circling down around the ocean floor hadn’t been sharks; they were trainers. Someone had waited for him to pass out and then cut him loose. They should have let me drown, he thought to himself, curling into a ball on the dry deck. I was through the hard part already.

As he shuddered to catch his breath, Valyn realized that someone was looming over him, blocking out the light. Fane. Part of him had thought it might be Annick. The enormous trainer was shouting.

“What in ’Shael’s sweet name is wrong with you, soldier? How long have you been on the Islands?”

Valyn struggled to respond, but only managed to retch more water out onto the deck.

“I’m sorry,” Fane said, cupping a hand to his ear. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“Couldn’t … couldn’t untie the knot, sir.”

Fane snorted. “I concluded that all on my own when you failed to rise to the surface. Couldn’t untie a basic double bowline? Looks like the Light of the Empire has grown somewhat dim.”

That earned an appreciative chuckle from Sami Yurl.

“It wasn’t … wasn’t a simple bowline, sir,” Valyn managed. He didn’t want to sound like he was making excuses, but didn’t want Fane to think he was inept, either. The memory of that extra twist, of Amie’s bound hands, blackened and clenched into claws, gouged at his mind. Had she struggled like him in her last moments, trying desperately to scrabble her way clear of her captivity, to rip apart the rope and escape?

“Oh, I’m sure it didn’t feel like a basic bowline down there, not with water filling your mouth and shit loading down the seat of your pants, but I assure you,” Fane said, holding up a severed section of dripping rope, the knot still in it, “that this looks just like any other bowline I’ve ever seen.”

“There was more.”

“Annick,” Fane said, turning to the sniper. “Is this the knot you tied?”

She nodded, eyes like stones.

“This is the entire knot?” Fane pressed. “You didn’t do anything fancy that might confuse His Most Radiant Highness? He is easily confused.”

She shook her head.

Valyn tried to read the emotion in those unreadable eyes. Annick was lying. It was as plain as that.

“Not a good start to the morning,” Fane concluded, dropping the knot to the deck in disgust. “Not a good start at all. Annick, you’re next. Sharpe, Ainhoa, toss our fearless leader over the side and let him swim back to the island.”