The Emperor's blades

17

“She lied,” Valyn insisted, slamming his fist down onto the table. “The ’Kent-kissing bitch lied.”

“Fine,” Lin responded. “She lied. Saying it over and over again isn’t going to help.”

“Although it is nice to get a firm grip on the facts,” Laith added, his voice too serious for the jest.

It was late-most of the soldiers were racked in their bunks or out on night training somewhere-and the three of them had the long, empty mess hall to themselves. Most of the place lay shrouded in darkness-no point in wasting good oil lighting a room with no one in it-but down at the far end of the space, through the open door leading into the kitchens, Valyn could make out flickering lamps and the humming of Jared, the old night cook, as he went about his business grilling pork for the next day’s lunch and keeping the kettle of tea boiling for soldiers returning late from their training. Laith had kindled the lamp above their own table, although he kept the wick barely long enough for Valyn to see the features of his friends. The flier was pushed back on the back legs of his chair, gazing up into the rafters. Lin’s hair glistened in the lamplight, still damp from her long swim.

She held up her hands in conciliation. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about Annick, but are you sure? You told me Fane held up the knot afterwards, that it was a normal bowline.”

Valyn tensed, then forced himself to take a deep breath. She was just trying to help, trying to sort through the facts with him.

“I managed to untie part of it before I blacked out,” he explained. “I panicked at the end, but I remember the knot clearly enough. It felt like a basic bowline, but it wasn’t. It had those two extra loops-the kind we found in the knot that was holding up Amie.”

“Well,” Laith pointed out, lowering the front feet of his chair to the ground and pursing his lips, “there’s no rule that she has to give you an easy knot. It would be just like Annick to try to drown you on principle.”

“It would,” Lin admitted. “But why would she lie about it?”

Lin still wasn’t convinced that Annick was behind Amie’s death, and her refusal to accept the reality of the situation was starting to grate on Valyn. Normally Lin was objective and clear-sighted, but there was something about Amie’s murder that she couldn’t see past, as though, because of the nature of the violence, it had to have been committed by a man.

“Because she knows,” he snapped. “That’s the only explanation. She knows we found Amie-everyone on Hook probably knows that by now. And if she’s got a brain in her head, she can figure out we were asking questions at the Black Boat.”

“So … what?” Lin asked. “She decides to kill all four of us? And Rianne, too, for good measure? Even if she did kill Amie, that’s an insane way to cover it up.”

“From Annick?” Laith asked, raising an eyebrow. “That actually sounds like a somewhat measured response.”

“I don’t claim to have it all figured out,” Valyn went on. “All I’m saying is there’s too much coincidence here to ignore. She might even have something to do with-”

Lin shot him a sharp glance and he cut himself off. He’d been about to say the sniper might have something to do with the plot against his own life, which meant she might know something about the death of his father, about threats to Kaden. Only he had told no one aside from Lin about the words of the dying Aedolian. It was a measure of his fatigue that he almost slipped in front of Laith.

“Have something to do with what?” the youth asked.

“My bow,” Lin supplied smoothly. “Cracked in the middle of my last sniper test. Valyn thinks someone sabotaged it.”

Laith eyed one, then the other, then shrugged. “Trial’s coming up. It’s going to be people rather than bows cracking before the whole thing’s finished.”

“Provided we make it to the ’Kent-kissing Trial,” Valyn added, turning to Lin. “All I’m saying is to go to the list. Then tell me if you don’t think Annick looks bloody as a slaughterhouse floor.”

“All right,” Lin said, her eyes bright in the lamplight. “Let’s go to the list.”

The Kettral were great believers in lists. The soldiers had lists for everything-checking over a bird before flight, setting a demolitions charge, boarding a ship-everything. Valyn could hear old Georg the Tanner’s voice droning on in the lecture hall: People make mistakes. Soldiers make mistakes. Everyone else on this ’Shael-spawned island is filling your tiny little heads with ideas about spontaneity, adaptation, thinking on the fly. He spat. Thinking on the fly is a good way to make mistakes. Lists do not make mistakes. Georg’s voice could put a roomful of cadets to sleep in a matter of heartbeats, but the man had flown missions well into his sixties, and Valyn tried to listen to what he had to say. You fools want to know how something gets added to the list? A soldier dies. Then we figure out why. Then we change the list. So learn the fucking list.

Unfortunately, there was no list, no set of steps for ferreting out a traitor and a murderer, but a jolt of logical thinking couldn’t hurt.

“First,” Valyn began, raising a finger, “we know that Amie was going to meet a Kettral the morning she was murdered. Second, she was meeting that person in Manker’s. Third, according to Juren, the only Kettral in Manker’s that morning was Annick. Fourth, Annick is a cold-blooded bitch.”

“Your fourth observation seems more emotional than analytical,” Lin pointed out.

“Fifth, the way Amie was killed suggests both Kettral professionalism and a complete absence of moral sentiment. Sixth, that strange bowline shows up in both the garret where Amie was killed and the boat where I was thrown overboard today. And seventh, Annick tries to drown me a day and a half after we find the body and start asking questions.”

Oh, Valyn thought to himself, and finally, there’s a plot to kill my entire family and take over the throne.

“When you put it like that, she doesn’t exactly come out looking like a priestess of Eira,” Laith observed.

“All right,” Lin said, nodding hear head wearily. “I agree. It looks bad for Annick. But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why would she want to kill Amie? And why in such a horrible way?”

“That’s the one I can’t answer.”

“I suppose sheer unbuckled cruelty isn’t reason enough?” Laith asked.

Valyn frowned. Maybe he was overthinking it. Even if Annick had killed Amie, maybe the murder had nothing to do with the plot against him. It seemed plausible that the sniper might just truss up someone and kill her for the practice. Only killing a whore who wasn’t much more than a girl wouldn’t be much practice. And it still didn’t explain the knot that had almost drowned him earlier in the day.

“I just think we need more information,” Lin said.

Valyn nodded slowly. “And I know one place to start looking.”

* * *

In theory, rummaging through someone’s trunk was easy. Each of the five barracks was simply one long room, and the cadets weren’t permitted locks. The problem was, someone was always in the barracks, just back from a night run or catching a quick nap before Blood Time. Lin would have raised eyes and turned heads if she just started rifling through the sniper’s belongings, and so for a few days Valyn let the worry eat at his gut, tried to focus on his training, on his studies, and the upcoming Trial. Late each night, he would meet up with Laith, Gent, and Lin in their corner of the mess hall and exchange pointless observations and suspicions, marking time until Lin could find a way into Annick’s trunk.

On this particular night, however, Lin was late. Valyn noted the moon through the window, measured it against the horizon, and shook his head.

“Calm down,” Laith said. “Lin’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Valyn replied, but he couldn’t stop drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Ha Lin outweighed Annick and she was the better fighter if it came to fists and knives. On the other hand, most confrontations were decided by one simple rule: The person to strike first was the one to walk away, and Valyn worried that, in the crucial moment, Lin might hesitate. Annick would not.

“You ought to be concerned about yourself,” Laith added, gesturing with his glass. It was filled with water, but he waved it around as if it were a tankard and he were seated in an alehouse. “You’re the one slated to go against Annick in the sniper test tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the cheerful reminder,” Valyn said.

“You’re fucked.”

“And for the optimism.”

“Just trying to bring a healthy realism to the discussion.”

Once more, Valyn shook his head. It didn’t help matters that he more or less agreed with Laith’s assessment. Valyn was a capable sniper and a reasonable hand with a flatbow, even by Kettral standards, but Annick was a ’Shael-spawned ghost. She’d lost only one sniper contest, to Balendin of all people, and Valyn was pretty sure the leach had found some way to cheat.

To make matters worse, if you went up against Annick, you usually ended the morning with a black eye, busted jaw, or chipped tooth. None of that was part of the contest-you were supposed to sneak close enough to shoot a bell before your opponent, and that was that-but Annick made it a point of pride to shoot the bell, then the trainers scouring the field with their long lenses, and then her opponent. She used blunt training arrows-stunners, the Kettral called them-but they could still break a tooth or knock you stone cold. A year earlier some of the cadets had complained to command. If Annick was good enough to pick her shots, they argued, she was good enough to shoot for the chest rather than the face. Annick’s response, which the trainers had accepted with a sort of sadistic pleasure, was that if the people lodging the complaint didn’t want to get shot in the face, then they should learn to keep their faces out of sight.

“This close to the Trial,” Laith said. “I’d find a way to beg off.”

“There’s no way to beg off.”

“There’s always a way. I’ve spent the past five years dodging the worst of the shit. It’s why I became a flier.”

“You became a flier because you like to go fast and you hate running.”

“As I said-dodging the shit.” Laith’s smile faded. “In earnest, though, Val. If Annick really is trying to kill you because of what you know about Amie, you don’t want to be within a mile of the sniper field with her.”

Valyn had thought much the same thing, but he’d be shipped to ’Shael before he let another cadet, murderer or no, scare him out of his training. “There’ll be two trainers watching the test with long lenses,” he reminded his friend. “She’d be crazy to take a shot at me then.”

“Suit yourself,” Laith said with a shrug. “I’ll pour some ale on your grave.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but it struck too close to the memory of the night they had buried Amie. Laith took a long swig of his water, scowled as though wishing it were something stronger, and the two fell into a gloomy silence. Lin found them in much the same position when she finally burst into the hall.

“I found something,” she began, eyes fierce.

Valyn motioned her to a seat, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure they had the hall to themselves.

“You know what the girl uses her ’Kent-kissing trunk for?” Lin asked as she slid onto the bench next to Laith.

“Epistles of unrequited love?” the flier suggested.

Lin coughed out a laugh. “Guess again.”

“A small orpaned infant that she has been secretly but tenderly nursing back to health?”

“Arrows,” Lin said.

“Just arrows?” Valyn asked, confused. It hardly sounded like a revelation.

“Must be more than a thousand of them in there,” Lin went on. “She makes her own. Strips the shafts, hammers out her own heads at the forge, even fletches the things with some kind of strange feather-northern black goose, or some shit. She’s got enough to kill everyone on the Islands a few times over. I almost didn’t bother to dig through them all.”

“Well, it’s hardly surprising that the best sniper in the cadets has a fondness for arrows,” Laith observed.

“But there was something else,” Valyn said, reading the truth in Lin’s eyes.

She nodded grimly while she rummaged in the pocket of her blacks, then drew out something golden. She tossed it across the table to Valyn.

He caught it and stared. It was a lock of hair, light, soft, and flaxen, tied with a ribbon. “Is this-,” he began, but he already knew the answer. By the time they found Amie, her body was a horrible rotting ruin. The flesh had started to sag on her bones, flies had picked over her tongue, and her eyes were already moldering in their sockets. The girl’s hair, however-that soft, flaxen hair-had practically glowed in the pale moonlight.

“Well, holy Hull,” Laith breathed. “I’ll be buggered blind.”

It was a tantalizing discovery, but they realized, as they bandied about possible explanations, that it didn’t actually tell them anything conclusive. Annick had known Amie. So what?

“Could be a trophy,” Laith said.

“Does Annick seem like the type to take trophies?” Lin countered.

“Maybe it’s proof of some sort,” Valyn suggested. “Proof that she killed Amie.”

“Pretty shitty proof,” Laith replied. “Heads are good proof. If you ship someone a head, chances are you killed the owner. Hands are pretty good proof. But hair?” He spread his hands.

“Besides,” Lin added, picking up the lock and inspecting it once more, “what’s it proving to anyone when it’s stuffed in the bottom of her trunk?”

The more they talked over the possibilities, the more frustrated Valyn became. As Lin pointed out, Annick didn’t even necessarily take the hair from Amie herself; someone could have given it to her to mark the target. Aside from Juren’s suggestion, they couldn’t be sure that the sniper had even been on Hook the day Amie died. By the time the wick in the lamp burned down to a charred stump, Valyn was ready to barge into Annick’s barrack, confront her with the hair, and demand answers.

“That sounds like a good plan,” Laith said dryly. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to cooperate.”

Valyn waved him off, weary and irritated at the same time. “You’re right. You’re right. ’Shael bugger me bloody, you’re right.”

“It’s a step,” Lin said, laying a hand on Valyn’s shoulder, her grip at once strong and soothing through the fabric. She met his eyes with her own. “‘No one can run a thousand leagues,’” she said, quoting Hendran, “‘but anyone can take one step, then another step.’”

“The next step I’m going to take is toward my rack,” Laith groaned, stretching in his seat like a cat. “I’ve got predawn flight drills in a couple of bells.”

Valyn nodded toward the flier. “We’ll put out the lamp and follow you out.”

Laith glanced from Lin to Valyn with a sly smirk. “Never too late for a tickle under the trousers.”

“Go fuck yourself, Laith,” Lin replied tartly. They were all exhausted, but the tension in Lin’s voice surprised Valyn.

“No other option, I suppose,” the flier replied, glancing down at his right hand with a shrug.

“Now that your whore is dead, you mean?” she demanded.

The smile froze on Laith’s face. “She wasn’t my whore.”

“Of course not. That’s the nice thing about borrowed gear-if it gets busted, it’s no skin off your nose. If Amie had been yours, maybe you would have taken better care of her.”

Valyn raised a hand to stop the words, but Laith stepped in close before he could speak. The flier’s normal genial humor had burned off like the oil from the sputtering lamp.

“I don’t know how I became the villain in this little tale,” he said, eyes bright, voice soft, “but don’t drag me into your guilt.”

“My guilt?” Lin sputtered.

“Oh, right,” the flier shot back. “I forgot. You only bought fruit from her. You never bought sex.” He held up his palms in mock surrender. “What’d you pay her? A few copper flames? Enough to put a decent meal on her table? Enough so she could stop whoring?”

Lin refused to respond, her face closed like a book.

“Before you come pointing your finger at me, why don’t you ask yourself what you did to make Amie’s life any better,” Laith demanded, eyes ablaze. Before Valyn could say anything to calm things down, the flier turned on his heel and stalked out.

For a long time after the door slammed, Valyn and Lin sat in the flickering shadows cast by the dying lamp. After a while she reached across the table, twining her fingers in his. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he tightened his grip on her hand.

“I just can’t…,” she began, then fell silent.

Valyn wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but he felt the emotion, the deep, sick helplessness behind the words. It seemed impossible that someone could murder an innocent girl, could truss her up like a slaughtered pig for the bleeding, all within sight of the Eyrie. Not only had the Kettral failed to save her, it looked like one of Valyn’s brothers or sisters in black was responsible for the killing.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said softly, trying to convince himself as much as Ha Lin. “We will.”

She slid over onto the bench beside him, and for a while the two sat side by side, hands entwined, bodies separate. Valyn could feel the warmth of her, but she kept apart, rigid in the darkness.

“There’s something else,” she said finally. “I found Balendin outside the barracks. Or … he found me.”

Valyn tensed, but Lin went on before he could respond.

“It was strange. He seemed nervous, almost frightened. Said he wanted to tell me something about Sami Yurl.”

“Yurl?” Valyn asked, baffled. “What was it?”

“That’s the thing. He wouldn’t say. Told me it was something I had to see, but that it was important.”

Valyn frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“What’s to like? Still, if he knows something about Yurl, something incriminating … Whoever killed Amie didn’t necessarily do it alone.”

“Yurl and Annick?” Valyn tried to make sense of the unlikely pair. Sami Yurl had his own cadre of nasty followers among the cadets, but the sniper had never been among them.

“If Balendin discovered something like that,” Lin pressed, “a murder-”

“He’d go straight to command.”

“Unless there’s a reason he can’t.”

Valyn puffed out a deep breath. He was weary, he realized, weary beyond the simple, honest exhaustion that came with a long month of training. The constant searching, guessing, and second-guessing, the glancing over the shoulder, the doubting and distrust were wearing him to a blunt edge. If one apple was rotten, you had to assume they all were, but that was a good way to starve.

“All right,” he said, knuckling his eyes, “but why would he come to you?”

“Maybe he knows we found Amie’s body. And he knows I’m more likely to listen than you are.”

Valyn snorted. “That’s debatable. You’ve got a shorter wick than I do when it comes to that temper of yours.”

“Maybe he just hates me a little bit less. You have a way of attracting … resentment.”

“So after all these years as Yurl’s minion, he wants to make nice? Wants to quit the atrep’s son and make friends with us?”

“Maybe,” Lin replied. “Pounding cadets in the ring is one thing. Hunting a whore and cutting her to pieces in an attic is something else. Maybe Balendin does have some decency.” Her tone suggested she didn’t find that very likely.

Decency. It was a tricky word for men and women trained to stab people in the back.

“Then we’ll both go see what he’s got to show you,” Valyn concluded. “If he can show it to one person, he can show it to two. I’ll promise to listen.”

“No,” Lin said. “It’s tomorrow morning. During your sniper test.”

Valyn cursed. “Well, tell him we can’t see it in the morning.”

“I don’t think it’s a thing,” Lin replied. “I think it’s an event. He wants me to see Yurl do something.”

Valyn clenched, then unclenched his fist.

“Where?” he asked, the question bitter in his mouth. He didn’t trust Balendin, didn’t trust this sudden crisis of conscience. For eight years, the leach had baited and battered just about every cadet on the Islands aside from Sami Yurl and his coterie. Where there was room to cheat, he cheated. Where there was space to lie, he lied. The idea of Lin going off with him somewhere in order to watch some secret event made Valyn’s stomach tighten. Of course, the blade cut both ways. If Balendin was treacherous, he could betray Yurl as easily as anyone else.

“Where?” he asked again.

“The west bluffs.”

The west bluffs comprised the sere, broken terrain toward the northwest corner of the island: some scrub, some thorns, and a good view out over the center of Qarsh. There were a few nesting seabirds on the ocean side, and a handful of interesting shells dropped by the gulls up on the cliffs. That was about it.

“What could he possibly want to show you up there?”

“That,” Lin replied, exasperation creeping into her voice, “is what I’m going to find out. Don’t worry, Val,” she added, softening her tone and squeezing his hand. “I’ll bring my real blades, and I’ll be careful.”

Valyn blew out a slow breath. “You’re just about a mile from the sniper test, up there,” he said. The thought calmed him somewhat, and he realized he’d half-expected Lin to tell him the meeting was in an abandoned house over on Hook. It didn’t make any real difference, of course. Something could go wrong up on the bluffs as well as in a cramped garret, but somehow the fact that Lin would still be on Qarsh, that she would be, in fact, only a few minutes’ hard run from the sniper range itself, helped his stomach to relax.

“All right,” he said finally. “’Shael knows I don’t trust that bastard, but it’s not like you’re a child.” She hadn’t moved her hand from his, and he found himself suddenly aware of its weight, of the gentle pressure of her callused fingers. They were alone in the hall, had been since Laith left, and for the first time since she had joined him on the bench he looked over at her, trying to make out the slender lines of her face in the darkness. “I’m just frightened for you,” he concluded quietly. There was more to say, a lot more, but he didn’t have the words.

Lin considered him for what seemed like a long time. Then, with no warning, she leaned over to press her lips against his. Her kiss was warm, and rough, and soft all at the same time. Valyn had bedded women before, but only whores over on Hook, and the experience had been somewhat uninspiring. This … this was something altogether different. After what seemed like a very long time, Lin pulled away.

“I’m sorry, I … I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Valyn replied, baffled but suddenly happy, his weariness stripped away, at least for the moment. “I should have done it a long time ago.”

Lin grinned, then stood and cuffed him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll see what Balendin has to show me. You just try not to let Annick mess up that fine face of yours too badly in tomorrow’s test.”

Before Valyn could respond, she turned on her heel. He was still smiling when the door closed behind her. She couldn’t be his, of course, not in any of the traditional ways. Kettral never married, and the few clandestine relationships that took place on the Islands were carefully concealed, buried deep enough that they would never interfere with training or war. Still, there was a possible life, a future, in which they flew on the same Wing, worked with each other every day, even grew old alongside each other, provided neither of them took an arrow in the back. It wasn’t much, but for a little while, Valyn let himself drift with the fantasy.

Then the bell rang for third watch, jolting him from his thoughts, and the darkness and silence settled down again, heavy as the water that had almost drowned him just days earlier.