The Emperor's blades

48

Valyn had rubbed his wrists bloody and just about torn his shoulder from its socket trying to wrench a hand free from the ropes binding his wrists behind his back. He knew all the tricks for escaping a slaughter-knot, but then, so did the people who trussed him up in the first place-that was the problem with fighting other Kettral.

His body ached from the strain, but the physical pain was nothing beside the searing, lacerating guilt. In his eagerness to save his brother, he had led his Wing directly into harm’s way, had ignored the signs, spurned sensible caution, and now, unless he figured some way to cut them all loose, they were going to die here in the shadow of an unnamed mountain at the end of the world. It would have been bad enough to fall with a blade in each hand and a ready curse on the tongue, but this … trussed up like a pig for the butcher. The shame was far, far worse than the pain.

Keep working, he told himself. Keep thinking. As long as you’re alive, the fight isn’t truly over.

Escape, however, seemed unlikely. The Aedolians had halted for the night in the notch of a long, serrated ridge, hundreds of paces above the land before or behind. It was a good place with excellent lines of sight, easily defended from either direction, although difficult to retreat from if a fight went against them. That seemed unlikely. The only other people for a hundred leagues in any direction had been the monks, and, if Micijah Ut was to be believed, his men had killed all of them. Kaden was out there somewhere, scrambling through the darkness, but Kaden was fleeing. That left Valyn and his Wing, and they were thoroughly incapacitated, trussed up and then dumped in a rough jumble of scree right at the center of the notch. Even if they managed to cut their way loose, they were still trapped between the rock to the north and south, and the men guarding the pass to the east and west. A few boulders offered some meager cover, but they would be easy to flank, and …

And before you start thinking tactics you’ve got to get out of these ’Kent-kissing ropes.

The task seemed next to impossible. Yurl and Ut both knew their business. They’d taken down Valyn’s crew by the book, seeing to Talal first. None of them knew the leach’s well, but they didn’t take chances: Yurl put a knife to his throat, and then Hern Emmandrake, his master of demolitions, handed him a cloth soaked with adamanth. Talal tried to jerk away when they pressed the sodden material to his nose and mouth, but within moments he slumped into a limp heap, the cloth draped over his face, while Yurl looked on, grinning smugly.

“Now,” he said, “we can see to making the rest of you comfortable.”

It didn’t take long for his Wing to truss them up like livestock for the slaughter, binding them hand and foot, with an extra loop around the throat to discourage struggling. Gwenna managed to take a chunk out of the ear of one of the Aedolians, but all it gained her was a cuff across the face that split open both lips and half closed one of her eyes. The hurt did nothing to tame her, but once they’d stuffed a dirty rag in her mouth, she could neither curse them nor snap off their faces, and after a few minutes of futile struggle, she sagged back against the ground, green eyes blazing with silent rage. Despite the bleakness of their situation, however, Valyn felt a moment of relief at being shoved to the sharp gravel of the pass rather than killed outright. It’s a mistake. Yurl’s got no reason to keep us alive except to gloat. Then, in a sickening surge of anger and disgust, he realized why they had been spared.

Balendin.

The leach approached, sauntering into the light of the fire as though he were a provincial nobleman strolling into his manicured grounds. He paused in mock surprise when he saw the prisoners, tsked at them disapprovingly while waggling a raised finger, then dropped into a squat a few paces away, satisfaction shining in his eyes. His dogs were nowhere to be seen, but that falcon rode on his shoulder; it cocked its head to one side and fixed Valyn with a hungry glare.

“So flattering,” Balendin began, winking at Valyn as he spoke, “for all of you to care so very much about me.”

“I’m going to kill you, leach,” Annick said. It was an unlikely threat. Valyn’s whole Wing was incapacitated, but Annick looked particularly vulnerable in the flickering firelight. The rough bonds emphasized the slenderness of her arms, her child’s figure; she might have been some lost girl tied for a slaver’s ship, except for her eyes, sharp and malevolent. “I’m going to put two arrows in your gut,” she went on, ignoring the blood seeping from the gash on her forehead, “and another one in that filthy, lying mouth of yours.” The threat shouldn’t have been credible, coming from someone in her position, yet it made Balendin hesitate.

The leach actually seemed to consider the risk, then waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t think so, although you have no idea how much I appreciate the sentiment.” He closed his eyes and tilted back his head, as though letting a warm rain wash over his face. “All that hatred, that rage, that beautiful … feeling!” He licked his lips and smiled. “It’s a gift, you know-this human capacity for feeling. Some animals have it, but only faintly, faintly. The shadow of a shadow. That delicious hatred of yours-” He licked his lips. “-as I said, you have no idea what it means to me.”

We’re helping him, Valyn realized grimly. All our rage just makes him more powerful. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and tried to calm his feelings. Without a well, Balendin was just like them, just another Kettral-trained soldier, and considerably worse with either a bow or a blade than most. If Valyn could just find some sort of calm.…

“She tried not to squeal, you know,” the leach continued, his tone casual, conversational, while the corners of his mouth twisted up in a slight grin as he turned to Valyn. “Your friend Ha Lin, I mean. The one with the whore’s ass.” He whistled a low appreciative whistle and shook his head. “Wish I could have done more with it, that day on the West Bluffs, but I was busy. Besides, you know Yurl,” he added, jerking his head toward where the Wing commander stood, a dozen paces away, engrossed in conversation with Micijah Ut. “He wanted to do most of the beating himself. Spent a good half hour with his knee on her throat, prodding her with the tip of his belt knife. Barely let me get in a few punches.” He shrugged. “Must be something about growing up the child of privilege.”

“You ’Shael-spawned son of a whore,” Valyn ground out, twisting helplessly against his bonds. “You fucking pig, you’d better hope Annick kills you before I get there.”

“Aaah,” Balendin said, closing his eyes in contentment. “That’s more like it.” He leaned closer to Valyn. “You know,” he continued, “it’s amazing. I think you feel more powerfully about your friend’s suffering than she did.”

“Balendin,” Yurl barked, turning from the Aedolian and gesturing urgently. “Get over here, there’s something-” He squinted into the darkness. “There’s someone coming.”

The leach straightened, a momentary look of irritation flashing across his face.

“Who?”

Yurl shook his head. “How the fuck do I know? The sun set an hour ago. Just one person, but I want you over here, ready.”

Valyn tensed against his bonds. The makeshift camp was good, but it wasn’t invulnerable: one Wing of Kettral, a score of Aedolians under Ut’s command. A small force-fifty men, say-could probably overwhelm them. Fifty men or one veteran Wing of Kettral. Valyn’s mind spun out a dozen scenarios-the Flea and Adaman Fane had caught up to them finally, a contingent of loyal Aedolains had tracked them through the mountains, a mob of monks from another local order … Fool, he hissed to himself. Quit dreaming and focus on what’s here, what’s real. The approaching figure was more likely to be one of Ut’s men than anything else, a returning scout or a messenger from the main body of his force.

The Aedolian commander, however, didn’t seem to think so. With a few barked orders, he set men on either side of the pass, bows trained on the darkness below, while Yurl and Balendin set themselves directly in the path of whoever approached. Yurl drew one of his two blades and dropped into a half guard. Balendin spun a dagger between his fingers, affecting calm. Valyn wasn’t fooled-most of the soldiers were wound tight as bowstrings, ready for Ananshael himself to stride into their camp.

The person who walked out of the darkness, however, was not Ananshael, not an Aedolian, not a monk, not a Kettral with bared blades. She was a vision, a dream of perfection-some kind of goddess who had lost her way through the heavens to stride into the slender compass of the flickering fire. Her gossamer robe was torn to tatters, but even that served to accentuate her beauty, the rent cloth exposing the hint of a hip, the silken line of her thigh. Valyn stared. He should have been thinking about Balendin, about his Wing, about how to use the slight distraction to engineer an escape, and yet, for a few long breaths all he could do was marvel, caught up in the spell of those violet eyes, that cascading black hair, the scent of jasmine mingled with fresh blood.

She’s been hurt, he realized, the thought stirring a deep, unexpected anger in him. Someone had carved a long, slender slice down her cheek, narrowly missing her eye. The wound would heal up fine-he’d seen worse in standard training-but there was something about this girl that made any injury seem like desecration, a sacrilege, as though someone had chiseled a gouge across a priceless statue.

Ut had his broadblade out of the sheath in a flash while Yurl drew his other sword. Why they needed them, Valyn had no idea. The young woman was a head shorter than the shortest of the Aedolians and slender as a willow. She was unarmed, her hands extended in supplication, and tears poured down her cheeks.

“Please,” she sobbed. “Please. I’m sorry!”

“No closer,” Ut said, scanning the darkness beyond her with wary eyes. She had come from the east, from the vast gulf into which Kaden had presumably disappeared earlier in the day. “On your knees.”

She dropped, heedless of the rough stones. “I’m sorry!” she moaned. “They forced me to follow them. I didn’t want to! I’m sorry!”

“Well,” said a new voice, rich and almost amused. “Triste, Triste, Triste. My lost little girl returns at last.” From behind a leaning boulder, a man with a bloodred blindfold wrapped around his eyes sauntered into the light.

“Adiv,” she gasped. “I did it! I did what you said. I brought him to bed, I was touching him, undressing him, I was going to-” She shook her head helplessly. “-but then it all started, the killing and the fire, and he just dragged me along, he and that other monk.”

The blindfolded man-some sort of Annurian councillor, if Valyn hadn’t forgotten the rank-crossed to her and raised her chin almost tenderly.

“And you followed him for two days,” he said, shaking his head. “You are a lovely creature, my dear. Nothing would delight me more than believing this … tale of yours, but it strains credulity.”

She cringed, as though he had struck her. She looked terrified, but Valyn caught a whiff of something … defiance, he realized, blinking in surprise. He had no idea how he knew-something to do with what had happened to him down in the Hole, he suspected, but he recognized the smell the way he would the scent of terror or lust. The girl was frightened, he smelled that even more clearly, but beneath her fear ran the cold current of resolve.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she sobbed, her words belying her scent. “I saw them kill soldiers, Aedolians. That horrible woman, the merchant, stuck her knives into them, and they died. She told me to run, and I ran. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” She folded at his feet, grasping with feeble hands at the man’s knees.

“And how is it,” Adiv replied, “that you return to us now?”

“They were going to-” Her chest heaved with terror. “-she was going to kill me!”

“Who?”

“Pyrre! The merchant! She stabbed that poor, sweet fat monk when he couldn’t keep up, and she said she had a plan, but she’d have to kill me, too.” She gestured helplessly to her feet, which were, Valyn realized with shock, ripped and bloodied past belief. It was amazing that Triste could even stand on them, let alone run.

“We did find the body of the monk,” Ut interjected curtly. “Single stab wound.”

Adiv tapped a finger against his chin, pondering, as though oblivious of the supplicant clutching at his knees. “Who is this woman you’re talking about?” he asked after a moment. “Her name is Pyrre?”

“Skullsworn,” Triste gasped. “She said she was a priestess … a priestess of Ananshael.”

Ut grunted. “That explains something.”

“Like the fact that you failed to kill her?” Adiv asked.

“We’ll take care of that tomorrow morning,” Yurl said. He’d sheathed both his weapons now that he saw that Triste was no threat, and stepped into the circle with smug superiority. “We’ll put the bird in the air at first light. Even if they spend the whole night running-this kind of terrain-there’s nowhere to hide.”

“No,” Triste managed, gesturing wildly. “No, you can’t wait! You have to go after them now!”

The Wing leader turned to her with a sly smile. “Don’t you worry, darling. They won’t get away. In the meantime, maybe I can do a little something to … cheer you up.” He eyed her up and down appreciatively. “It’s clear that the men you’ve been with just don’t know how to treat a woman.”

The minister cut him off with a curt chop of his hand. “Why do we have to go after them now?” he asked, his voice calm but measuring.

“The old monk,” Triste explained, raising her eyes for the first time. “He knows this part of the mountains. There are caves, he said, huge caves. They’re going there now.”

Ut glanced over sharply at Adiv. “Is that true?”

The minister shook his head impatiently. “How should I know? We never expected to be out here. The maps we have don’t even show the main peaks.”

“What kind of caves?” Ut demanded, seizing the girl by the hair and dragging her to her feet.

“I don’t know!” she cried, arching her back and rising onto her toes, face twisting in anguish. “I don’t know! Just that they’re big. The monk said once they were inside, they could walk for days, could come out in dozens of places.”

“’Shael take it,” Ut cursed.

“My bird won’t do much good if you let them skulk off into a cave,” Yurl said, chuckling, as though amazed at the incompetence of those around him.

Valyn felt a sudden fierce hope. If Kaden could reach the caves, Yurl and the Aedolians could spend days searching for just the entrance, weeks! Of course, Triste stood to ruin everything. Evidently she was as treacherous as she was gorgeous.

“Always the unexpected,” the minister said, shaking his head. “Where are these caves? How far away is Kaden?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “A few miles? The monk said they could make it by dawn.”

Adiv nodded slowly, then turned to Yurl. “All right, then. Can you find them by dawn?”

The gibbous moon gave ample light, but anyone searching would have to keep the bird low. If Kaden and his company could stick to the shadows, it would be hard to hunt them down. On the other hand, if they had to cover a few miles of extremely rough terrain by dawn, they wouldn’t have the luxury of choosing the most sheltered route. There would be sections where their haste would force them into the open. Valyn ground his teeth. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion, but he didn’t like his brother’s chances.

“I can have my people in the air in two minutes,” Yurl replied, “but it’s a big world out there, and it’s dark. If he’s changed course to break for these caves, we could spend half the night soaring around the wrong valley.”

Ut glanced at Adiv, and the minister, as though he could feel the other man’s gaze upon him, looked up, tightened the blindfold uneasily, tilted his head to one side, then nodded. “Kaden’s not moving at the moment. If he does, I can tell you roughly what direction he’s headed.”

Yurl raised an eyebrow. “Seeing in the dark’s an impressive trick for a blind man. You want to explain how you know all this?”

“Not especially,” Adiv replied evenly.

“Well, if I’m going to put my Wing at risk by taking them into the air on your say-so, why don’t you just go ahead and try.”

“You’re telling me you’re not comfortable flying after an unarmed band, three exhausted people?”

“One of them’s Skullsworn!”

Adiv waved a hand dismissively. “There are five of you. You are Kettral. You have a bird. Pyrre, Tan, and Kaden have been running for days. If you would have me believe you can’t handle this tiny little chore, I will begin to wonder if we made a mistake involving you at all.”

Yurl twisted away and spat, but the minister had him in a bind. “Once we’re in the air, how does this secret knowledge of yours get to us?”

“Simple,” Adiv replied, gesturing toward the fire. “Two flames means north, three means south, four means east. Just glance back here from time to time-you’ll be able to see this pass from fifty miles out.”

“Fine. Wait here, and I’ll try to clean up your fucking mess,” he snarled.

Ut turned toward him. The Aedolian had drawn his blade when Triste appeared, and he looked ready to use it now. Adiv, however, stepped between the two.

“If we’re going to discuss messes,” he said, nodding toward where Valyn and his Wing were bound, “it seems you’ve got some cleaning of your own to do.”

Yurl grimaced. “One of my men thinks they could still be useful. We bag Kaden, then they’re dead.”

“In that case,” Adiv replied, “it might behoove you to find the Emperor and kill him. I hate loose ends.”

Yurl turned to gesture to his Wing, but Ut stepped forward. “I’m coming.”

The Wing commander hesitated, then shook his head. “You’ve never been on a bird. You don’t know the first thing about kettral.”

“I’ll learn,” the Aedolian replied.

Yurl turned to Adiv, his hands outspread, but the minister just smiled a dry, serpentine smile. “It appears,” he said, “that you and ‘your people’ are not entirely trusted. Ut will go with you and you will leave-” He scanned the Wing, then pointed a thin finger at Balendin. “-your second-in-command with us.”

“Kettral Wings don’t have a second-in-command,” Yurl snapped.

Adiv shrugged. “Then he won’t be missed.” Yurl started to object, but the minister cut him off with a raised finger. “This is not negotiable. And you are wasting time.”

The young woman, Triste, was trussed up despite her pleas and protestations, then slung to the ground along with Valyn and the rest of his Wing.

“I’ll be back to entertain you later,” Yurl quipped, eyeing her appraisingly. “I like the way you look with that rope around your neck.” He grinned when she didn’t respond, then motioned to his Wing and strode down the western slope into the darkness, toward the birds.

Triste lay in a heap, her dress hitched up around her thighs, whimpering and shuddering until Gwenna shifted to kick her ungently in the head.

“Knock it off,” the demolitions master growled. “It’s enough you just sold out your own Emperor. The least you can do is to quit that fucking whining.”

Valyn was inclined to agree, but there was something about Triste … that defiance he’d smelled, and now … something like satisfaction. He needed to think. Yurl’s sudden departure had left the Aedolians, the minister, and Balendin to guard him and his Wing. If they were going to make their escape, this was the time to do it, and the last thing he needed was the treacherous girl’s sobs breaking into his thoughts. To his surprise, however, she raised her head, violet eyes blazing with anger rather than fear. She glanced past him, but Balendin and the rest were clustered around a small lantern a dozen paces distant, watching the great dark shape of Yurl’s bird launch itself into the air.

“I didn’t sell him out,” she hissed. “There’s a plan. This is all part of the plan.”

* * *

“Well,” Pyrre said, gazing across the narrow valley as the enormous silhouette of the bird floated noiselessly into the night sky, blotting the stars. “Normally I find elaborate plans just the slightest bit untenable, but I have to say, this one seems to be working out quite nicely. Of course, we’re not yet to the point where an entire Kettral Wing chases me through a maze of razor-sharp rock.”

“She did it,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t sure she could do it.”

“It looks like we can add ‘brains’ to your paramour’s list of impressive … assets,” the assassin agreed.

Tan was in no mood for celebration. “The girl has done her part,” he said, turning to Kaden. “Yours is considerably more difficult.”

Kaden nodded, stilling his excitement and his apprehension both. His umial was right. If he failed, all Triste had managed was to expedite their capture and execution.

“I don’t know how the ak’hanath communicates with its handlers,” the older monk admitted, “but it does. During the day, they might have relied on the bird to hunt us down, but at night that Csestriim thing will be their guide. If we fail to elude it, the entire ruse is pointless.”

“I’m still looking forward,” Pyrre interjected, “to hearing how you elude a creature that tracks your sense of self.”

“You destroy the self,” Tan responded.

A long silence followed. The stars burned like silent sparks on the vast sheet of darkness.

“I take back what I said about liking the plan,” Pyrre said finally.

“The vaniate,” Kaden breathed.

Tan nodded. “The vaniate.”

“It sounds very impressive,” the assassin interjected. “And I hope it’s equally fast, because that bird is half a mile off. If they’re following the Csestriim critter, they’ll be here before long.”

Kaden felt his heart quicken, then forced it down. He had never summoned the emotionless Shin trance before, had no idea if he could do so now, but Tan had said he was ready. Besides, there was little choice, if he was to elude the ak’hanath and the men following.

“Clear your mind,” the monk instructed. “Then bring up a saama’an of a bird, a heart thrush.”

Kaden closed his eyes, then did as he was told, the image of the creature leaping bright and sharp into his mind as it had in a thousand painting tests.

“See the coverts,” Tan continued, “the pinions, the flight feathers … see every detail … feel the rough scales of her leg, her smooth beak, the soft down of her breast.”

Somewhere to the south, the kettral let out an ear-piercing shriek. Worry surged through Kaden’s blood, and the image of the thrush wavered until he forced down the anxiety. See the bird, he told himself. Just the bird.

“Leave your hand on her breast,” Tan said. “Can you feel her heart beating?”

Kaden paused. This was new. The saama’an was a visual exercise. No one had ever asked him to file away tactile sensation. He took a deep breath.

“She is frightened,” Tan said, “trapped in your hand. You know her fear. Let yourself feel that fear.”

Kaden nodded. This was like the beshra’an, he realized, throwing himself into the mind of a creature, only this creature lived inside his brain. He let himself sink deeper into the vision, laid a hand on the bird’s heart and felt it beating.

“Can you hear her heart?” Tan asked.

Kaden waited. A mountain wind skirled in his ears. Something down the slope somewhere knocked free an avalanche of pebbles. Behind it, though, beneath it, the bird’s heart beat, quick and light, thumping, thumping, until it filled his ears, his mind. He held the creature in his hand-so fragile, he could crush her with a squeeze of his fingers. She was terrified, he realized. He was terrifying her.

“Now let her go,” Tan said. “Open your hand and let her fly away.”

Slowly, Kaden opened his fingers, reluctant to let the thrush escape his grasp. It seemed important that he hold her, for some reason, that he clutch her to him … but Tan had said to let her go and so, ever so lightly, he let her slip from his fingers.

“She’s flying now,” he whispered.

“Watch,” Tan replied.

Against closed lids, Kaden watched as the bird dwindled, smaller and smaller against the great blue of his mind’s vast sky, smaller and smaller until she was a smudge, a speck, a pinprick on the great open emptiness of the heavens. And then she was gone. Blankness filled his mind.

He opened his eyes.

Almost overhead now, the kettral shrieked. They’re close, he realized, but they’re too late.

Then he saw the eyes. At first he wasn’t sure what they were: glowing bloodred orbs, at least a dozen, some the size of apples, others no larger than Annurian copper coins, floating up the slope below. As they drew closer, he could make out the irises, pulsing with crooked veins, dilating and contracting, and then he understood. The ak’hanath had come.

He should have been terrified, and yet the realization carried no fear. The creature was a fact-no more, no less-like the fact that night had fallen, or that Pyrre stood, staring, at his side. Like the fact that people would die tonight. It was strange, he realized, this lack of feeling. He used to feel something. Only minutes ago, before he had freed the bird inside him, his mind had been a welter of emotions: fear and confusion and hope. Inside the vaniate, however, there was only a great, blank calm.

The ak’hanath was larger than he had expected, almost the size of a female black bear, but it skittered up the rocky slope more quickly than any bear, claws clicking over the stones, chitinous legs flexing and unflexing, causing the eyes at the joints to bulge under the strain. A dozen paces off it paused, turned back in forth in the darkness as though sniffing for something, then let out a thin but piercing wail just at the edge of hearing. Twice more the creature uttered its unnatural scream and then, from father down the slope, an answering call.

“Two,” Tan observed as the second horror approached.

As it drew near, the first ak’hanath raised wicked, slicing pincers, as though testing the air, clicking them open and shut spasmodically. One of those things could hack through the skull of a goat. They had killed Serkhan back at the monastery. Facts. Just more facts.

Kaden turned to Tan. “Is it too late?”

“Not if I kill them.”

“About that,” Pyrre interjected, hefting a small stone and hurling it at one of the creatures. It flew true, striking one of the eyes with a sick, popping sound. The ak’hanath spasmed a moment, let out another high-pitched shriek, then sidled farther up the slope. Kaden could make out the tiny limbs around its mouth twitching feverishly. “Any advice?” She might have been asking about the best local wine.

“Leave them to me,” the monk replied. “You have your own part to play.”

“You don’t want help?”

“The ak’hanath are trackers, not killers, although these-” The monk frowned. “-they differ from those I have studied.”

“They seemed like they were doing plenty of killing back there in Ashk’lan,” the assassin pointed out, crushing two more eyes with two more thrown stones. The spiders were agitated now, thrashing violently, and they had resumed their approach.

“In Ashk’lan, they had not come up against someone who knew how to fight,” the monk replied, stepping forward to meet the foe.

Even from inside the vaniate, everything seemed to happen at once. The closest creature, still a few paces distant, crunched itself into a ball, then sprang. Kaden had watched crag cats attack-they were the fastest animals in the mountains, quick enough to take down a deer in full flight, but even at its fastest there was something relaxed, almost languorous in the cat’s motion. The ak’hanath moved with the violence of a mechanical device tightened past tolerance in an explosion of grasping claws and slicing arms.

Tan’s naczal, somehow, was there to meet it, smashing the creature aside as the monk rolled with the blow, coming back to his feet in a fighting crouch the like of which Kaden had never seen. The strange Csestriim spear spun above his head in quick, looping arcs.

“Stay behind me,” he said to Kaden, not taking his eyes from the creature.

Pyrre had kept up her assault with the rocks-she would have run out of knives long before the creatures ran out of eyes-but the effort of the attack didn’t seem to wind her.

“I never expected to find a Shin monk fighting dharasala style,” she said, a new note of respect in her voice. “And in the old forms, too.”

“I wasn’t always a monk,” Tan replied, and then it was his turn to attack.

He darted between the two spiders, swinging the spear in a great overhead arc. For a moment Kaden thought the man had missed his target, then realized the true intention behind the blow as each end of the naczal connected with one of the ak’hanath. In the cool space of the vaniate, Kaden wondered how long Tan must have studied with the weapon, how carefully he must have trained. Had he learned those skills among the Ishien, or were they older still, a remnant of some prior life Kaden couldn’t begin to imagine?

Tan stood almost between the spiders now, in what seemed an impossible position, too close to maneuver, surely too close to bring his long spear to bear. And yet, with short, savage motions, Tan was striking them, each blow counting double as it connected with the creature before and behind. More, when the spiders thrust back against his blade, metal scraping against shell and ichor, he was able to use the strength of one against the other, allowing the naczal to pivot in his hand. The creatures were landing their own blows, vicious cuts and snaps, but the monk was able to keep them away from his head and chest, driving his own attack harder, harder, until, with a great plunging motion he was able to force the spear between the flailing arms and into the gullet of the first ak’hanath. As the thing spasmed and screamed, he ripped the blade free, wrenching it overhead in a crushing arc that staggered his remaining foe, then stepped in close to finish it.

For a hearbeat, the mountainside was still and quiet save for the sound of the monk’s breath rasping in his chest.

“You’re hurt,” Pyrre said, stepping forward, but Tan held up a hand to keep her back.

“Nothing fatal.” He glanced down at his robes. “Though the creatures should not have been so large, nor so strong.”

“When this is all finished,” the woman said, giving the monk a hard, appraising look, “you’re going to have to tell me where you learned to fight.”

“No,” Tan replied. “I won’t.”

Before the assassin could respond, a clicking and screeching broke the silence beyond their small circle. At first Kaden thought that Tan had failed to kill one of the creatures, but both spiders lay still, their horrid red eyes dimmed by death. Down the slope, however, fifty paces away and closing, more eyes floated through the night, dozens of eyes, scores.

“They brought more,” Tan observed, a hint of weariness in his voice.

“How many?” Kaden asked, trying to sort through the glowing red orbs into individual spiders.

“Looks like ten, maybe a dozen. They weren’t at the monastery all these months. We would have seen them. They must have come with the Aedolians.”

“You can’t fight a dozen of them,” Pyrre said.

“Can, or cannot,” Tan replied, “it is what needs to be done.” He turned to Kaden. “You can both still escape them if you break free. They followed the others here; they cannot track you in the vaniate.”

“You’re going to die here, monk,” Pyrre observed.

“Then your god will be glad,” Tan replied. “Go now, both of you. The time has come to make good on our words.”

And then the monk was moving forward, the naczal swinging above his head. A part of Kaden knew he should be frightened, horrified. But fear and horror-they were like distant lands he had heard of but never visited. Tan would live, or he would die. Either way, Kaden’s own role was clear. He was to run. As his umial ducked and stabbed, sliced and hacked at the fetid tide rolling over him, as Rampuri Tan fought for his life against something dark and unnatural, something that should have been wiped from earth millennia earlier, as the old monk struggled for the very survival of his pupil, Kaden turned into the darkness and ran.

* * *

It wasn’t good territory for a breakout. The wind and cold had scoured everything from the notch but a few erratic boulders, scattered about like the remnants of some dilapidated tower. The Aedolian lanterns didn’t cast much light, but still, the moon was out. Valyn frowned. Whoever planned to cut them free had a good bit of open ground to cover, with only the treacherous shadows to shield them from prying eyes.

The good news was, Balendin, Adiv, and most of the remaining Aedolians had drifted to the eastern end of the notch, fifteen paces distant, staring out over the great gulf of night. There seemed to be some confusion over the signal fires, the ones intended to mark Kaden’s direction of flight. Balendin was arguing with Adiv while stabbing his finger alternately at the flames and the night-shrouded peaks beyond. The wind whipped their voices away before Valyn could make out more than scraps of words, but it seemed as though something had gone awry with their plan, a supposition that kindled in him a little bit of hope. Two men still guarded Valyn and his Wing, but they looked distracted, ill at ease, as though they wished they were with the others, comfortably within the compass of the lamplight. They carried swords sheathed at their sides, but it wouldn’t be too difficult for an experienced fighter to get close enough to fire a couple of shots, or, barring that, cut their throats.…

But Kaden’s not an experienced fighter, Valyn reminded himself grimly. Aedolians might not have presented any great threat to a Kettral Wing, but they were nonetheless accounted among the most capable soldiers in the world. Any mistake, and they’d raise the alarm, and once that happened, there wouldn’t be time to loose any of the captives. Valyn chafed at his helplessness. He had come to save his brother, and here he was, trussed like a yearling lamb. He had a dozen questions for Triste, but after Gwenna’s brief outburst and the girl’s whispered warnings, the two Aedolians had cuffed them all into silence. Just get us out, Kaden, he thought grimly. Just get us out, and I can take it from there.

He smelled his brother before he heard him: just the faintest whiff of sweat and goat wool off to the north. He twisted his head in time to see a shadow ghosting down the nearly sheer northern wall of the notch. It looked like a difficult climb even in daylight, but Kaden had spent half his life in these mountains. Maybe he’d learned more than painting and pottery. Valyn glanced over his shoulder, worried that the guards would catch sight of his brother, but they were oblivious. They can’t see, Valyn realized. They can’t see into the darkness the way I can.

Suddenly, a clatter of rockfall broke the silence on the eastern slope, over by Adiv and Balendin, a hundred paces from where Kaden finished his treacherous descent and started forward, flitting between the boulders like a ghost. The minister turned an ear to the darkness, his lips pursed in a slight frown.

“Eln, Tremmel,” he said, gesturing to a couple of soldiers. “Take a quick look down the eastern slope.”

“There’s no one there,” Balendin said, his voice calm, confident.

Adiv turned to face the leach, as though studying his face from behind that uncanny blindfold.

“How do you know that?”

The youth shrugged. “I’m on this Wing because I know things like that. Trust me. There’s no one there.”

He can feel the emotion, Valyn remembered with a sudden stab of fear. Talal had insisted that Balendin relied on emotion directed at him, but perhaps he could feel the residue of other feelings, too. There was no telling just what twisted well of power fed a creature like that, and if he could feel emotion, it meant he could feel Kaden. However brave Valyn’s brother had been in trying to stage a rescue, fear and excitement must be coursing through his body like poisoned wine. If Balendin caught even an eddy of that, the game was up.

Hurry, Kaden, Valyn prayed silently. Hurry.

The minister considered the youth a moment longer, then gestured to his men once more. “Check it anyway.”

The two guards watching the prisoners had drifted toward the rest of the group, curiosity sucking them a couple paces toward the light.

Now, Valyn thought. This is the time.

And then, as though summoned, a shadow broke away from the darkness. Valyn stared.

It had been eight years since he’d last seen his brother, since he and Kaden raced around the hallways and gardens of the Dawn Palace, playing at being Kettral. He recognized his brother instantly, their father’s jaw, their mother’s nose, the distinct line of his mouth, and yet the person standing before him was a boy no longer. He was lean almost to the point of gauntness, the bones of his cheeks, the thin striated muscles of his arms tight under sun-darkened skin. Kaden had grown taller, as well, a few inches taller than Valyn himself. Of course, the Bone Mountains were a far cry from the luxury of Annur, from those pampered childhood mornings sipping ta and slurping down porridge in the warm kitchens. During his quick search, Valyn had seen enough to know that the mountains were a hard place, and Kaden had hardened as well. He held his belt knife as though prepared to use it, but the knife was the least of it. Valyn’s gaze was riveted on his brother’s eyes.

Those eyes had always been startling, even frightening for some of the newer palace staff, but Valyn had grown used to them over the years. He remembered Kaden’s eyes being bright and steady as the flame of a lamp on a winter’s evening, as warm as candles set out for the nightly meal. Those eyes still burned, but Valyn no longer recognized the fire. The light was distant, like twin pyres seen from far off, cold, like the light of the stars on a moonless night, cold, and hard, and bright.

Even given the circumstances, Valyn might have expected some sort of smile, a nod, some mark of recognition. Kaden showed nothing. He raised his belt knife, and for a horrible moment, meeting those pitiless eyes, Valyn thought his brother meant to kill him. Then, before he realized what was happening, the ropes binding his wrists had fallen away and he was free. Without a pause, without a heartbeat of acknowledgment or celebration, Kaden moved down the line, cutting loose the rest of the Wing.

All of it took less than a dozen breaths. Valyn could tell his Wing was shocked and surprised, but then, they’d spent a long time on the Islands learning to deal with shock and surprise. Valyn waved Annick toward the pile of their weapons, blades and bows leaning against a rock a few paces away. He glanced over toward the two guards. They were still peering toward the brink of the precipice, but they could turn at any moment. As Gwenna and Annick rearmed, he crossed to Talal, lifted the adamanth cloth from the leach’s mouth, and waved away the residue of the noxious fumes. His friend choked, gagged, and then, after what seemed like an age, blearily opened his eyes. He’d been knocked out with adamanth before-all the leaches in the Islands trained for this-and only time would bring him fully awake. In a minute or so, he might be able to run, but it would be a long while before he could reach his well again, by which time the fight would likely be over, one way or another.

Valyn’s first thought was to race for the bird. Yurl’s Wing had tethered Suant’ra in a small depression less than a quarter mile down the slope to the west. But that was a fool’s errand. There was no telling what kind of chaos could break out in the darkness with the Annurians behind them and Balendin wielding that well of his. It has to be now, Valyn thought. Quick and brutal, while we have the advantage.

Annick already had her bow strung. Valyn glanced over at the soldiers. The argument over the signal fires had intensified, drawing in Balendin and a few more of the Aedolians. Laith, meanwhile, was busy distributing the blades to the rest of the Wing while Gwenna silently rifled through her munitions, setting aside a handful that Valyn didn’t recognize, shaking her head in anger as she worked. He briefly considered having her rig a covering blast with smokers-that would give them an even chance of reaching Suant’ra-but even Gwenna would need a few minutes to set the charges, and the smart money said they didn’t have a few minutes. Valyn gestured to Annick for her small flatbow. The sniper was better with it than anyone else in the group, but she couldn’t fire two weapons at once, and Kaden had only his belt knife. Valyn doubted his brother had ever fired such a thing, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more steel in the air when the chaos broke, and Valyn himself was better with his blades. Kaden eyed the weapon briefly, watched while Valyn mimed the mechanism, then accepted it with that same icy calm. That ice troubled Valyn, as though he had come all this way to rescue a walking corpse, or a ghost, but there wasn’t time to worry about it now.

Not time left to do anything but go, Valyn thought, gesturing to Annick.

One of the two guards was pointing at something to the east. He spat into the darkness, then started to turn back toward the prisoners. Annick’s arrow took him clean through the throat. He crumpled without even a groan, but his armor clattered against the rocks, and the second man turned into a second arrow, this one straight through the eye and into the brain.

That was two down in as many heartbeats, two out of a dozen. But it’s not them we need to kill, Valyn thought, pointing hard at Balendin.

Both Annick and Balendin seemed to have heard his thoughts at the same time. The leach turned, anger and fear warring on his face, just as Annick loosed one, then two, then three arrows, her arm moving so fast that for a split second they all hung in the air at the same time, one before the other, like geese on the wing, all hurtling toward the leach. It was over. No one could defend against that-there were just too many arrows, just too little time-but at the last moment, just as he expected to see the leach’s face transfixed with a quivering wooden shaft, the arrows veered wide, knocked skittering into the darkness by some invisible palm. Balendin glanced over his shoulder, as though he, himself, were surprised at the result, then turned back to the group, a smile stretching across his face.

“So,” he began slowly. “I see you’ve all decided to have one last go at vengeance.” He shook his head as though marveling, but made no effort to reach for his blades. The falcon on his shoulder let out an ear-piercing shriek, and the remaining Aedolians turned toward the fight. Metal grated on metal as they slid their swords from their sheaths. Balendin didn’t seem to notice them. “Who would believe that people could get so worked up about a little torture, the occasional brutal murder?”

The remaining Aedolians and Tarik Adiv had had plenty of time to realize what was happening, but Annick never hesitated, shifting her fire to the armored men, who dropped like stones before they could even start to cover the gap. Four, five, six. The sniper realized that Balendin was invulnerable, at least for the moment, and she’d adjusted her attack to deal with the rest of the field. Seven, eight. The leach, for his part, seemed amused to let them die. Valyn ground his teeth. With his well running deep and strong, Balendin could clearly handle an entire Wing all by himself.

At the last moment, Adiv fled into the darkness, Annick’s arrow clattering into the rock where he had stood. If Balendin was concerned about the disappearance of his final remaining ally, he didn’t show it. In fact, the leach was grinning.

“The problem with confederates,” he said, gesturing at the fallen bodies, “is that you never quite know how far you can trust them.” He nudged one of the dead Aedolians with a toe. “Although I hate to cast doubt on the noble Micijah Ut, I half suspect he intended to murder us when this whole business was wrapped up. He really doesn’t seem to relish his job in quite the way we do.”

Annick loosed another arrow, but Balendin flicked a contemptuous finger, and it flew wide into the night. Kaden still held the flatbow, his finger on the trigger, but its bolts would prove no more useful than the sniper’s arrows. Talal, Valyn thought angrily. We need Talal. But the leach was only now recovering from the adamanth, rolling groggily on the ground, trying to stumble to his knees.

Balendin considered the sight for a moment. “I hope you realize,” he said, addressing Talal, “that as a fellow leach, I hold you in the highest esteem. We happy few, so reviled by the world, yet so blessed by the gods-we should stick together. So you understand it pains me that I have to do this-”

A stone the size of Valyn’s fist flew through the night, hurled by some invisible force, striking Talal squarely between his eyes and dropping him to the earth.

“And now,” Balendin added, turning smugly to Annick, “just because I’m getting tired of swatting down your arrows.” Another stone leapt from the ground, hovered, revolving in the air before the leach, then whistled through the night, striking Annick with an audible crack and cutting a ragged gash across her forehead. She dropped, knees unstrung.

“Balendin,” Valyn ground out, fighting for time, “you can’t win.”

The leach laughed, the sound rich with acid and amusement.

“No one ever said you weren’t bold,” he replied, shaking his head, “just that you weren’t too bright.”

Three more stones dropped Laith, Gwenna, and Triste like beef at the slaughterhouse, eyes glazed, hands limp on their weapons. Valyn had no idea if any of them were still breathing, no idea if they were even alive.

“I just cannot tell you how much I regret losing such delectable emotion,” Balendin said, then shrugged. “But they have to go sometime, and with the hate rolling off you, I still feel like I could rip the top off this mountain.”

“What did you do to them?” Valyn demanded, sickened by the possibilities.

The leach shrugged. “Nothing permanent. Not yet. I like to give Yurl the illusion that he controls the Wing, and he sometimes has some … unusual ideas about military protocol. Especially when it comes to female captives. Hard to say which one will give him the most pleasure. This delightfully treacherous young bitch,” he said, indicating Triste with a jerk of his head, “is clearly the best catch, but then, there’s always something satisfying about fucking an angry woman into sobbing submission.”

Kaden took half a step forward, the flatbow aimed directly at Balendin’s chest.

“Who are you?” he asked. They were the first words he’d spoken all night.

Valyn stared. If his brother was frightened to be facing a Kettral-trained leach, he didn’t show it. He looked at Balendin the way a butcher might consider a cut of meat, as though wondering how best to start carving. The veterans back on the Islands were cool, collected, but this … it was as though Kaden had never even heard of fear.

“I,” the leach responded, evidently enjoying his moment, “am Balendin Ainhoa, Kettral leach serving on the Wing of one Sami Yurl, himself serving the Emperor of Annur, Kaden hui’Malkeenian.” He winked. “I guess that’s you. At least, for a little while longer. I imagine we’ll have some trouble deciding whether you watch your brother die, or whether he watches you, but, as they say, it all works out in the end.”

If the threat bothered Kaden, he didn’t show it. Those bright, calm eyes just bored into the leach, and for the first time since the start of the showdown, Valyn saw Balendin’s confidence falter.

“As I’m sure your brother will tell you,” the leach continued, “I’ve developed something of a reputation for killing people slowly, strip by strip.”

“We all have our hobbies,” Kaden replied. He could have been discussing farming techniques.

Balendin grimaced.

It’s not working, Valyn realized. Kaden doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel the fear, the anger. He had no idea how it was possible, but his brother didn’t seem to feel anything.

Then, in a flash, he understood what had to happen. “Kaden!” he began, “you have to-,” but his brother had already pivoted toward him, drawing that short knife of his, raising it in a quick motion as Balendin started to shout. Valyn met his brother’s eyes, those icy, distant flames, as Kaden closed on him. He doesn’t feel love, either, he realized as Kaden hammered the knife down with a savage thrust straight at Valyn’s head, or sorrow, or regret.…

* * *

Kaden glanced down at his brother’s body, bleeding and crumpled at his feet. Deep in the vaniate, everything the Shin taught him seemed so much easier, more natural, as though this final skill enabled all the rest. He had wanted to know the leach’s well and so he had cast his mind into the youth’s head, abandoning himself to the beshra’an as he listened to the conversation hum around him. It hadn’t been difficult then, to determine that he drew his power from emotion. It almost seemed obvious. Then it was just a matter of knocking Valyn unconscious. Some distant part of his mind hoped he hadn’t killed him, but that, too, would serve the purpose.

Kaden raised his eyes to the leach once again.

“I’m going to murder you,” Balendin panted, eyes desperate, darting.

Kaden remembered what it felt like to be afraid, but only vaguely, the way you remember a story from your childhood, events so distant, they may not have really occurred.

“Unlikely,” he replied, hefting his flatbow and leveling it at the youth’s chest. He’d never used the weapon before, but the saama’an of Valyn’s mimed instruction filled his head, and he released the catch and slid his finger onto the trigger.

“Even without my well, I’m still Kettral. You’re just a fucking monk. You don’t know shit about-”

Kaden squinted and pulled the trigger. The mechanism worked as he had anticipated. The bolt tore into the leach, and with a shriek of rage and pain, Balendin Ainhoa tumbled from the low ledge into the vast darkness of the night.

Kaden turned back to the crumpled form of his brother, knelt down, and pressed a finger firmly to his neck. He hadn’t known how hard he had to strike-he’d never knocked someone out with the pommel of his knife before-and so he’d erred on the side of caution, hitting him as hard as he could.

“Valyn,” he said, his own voice cold and distant in his ears. He slapped his brother roughly on the cheek. “Valyn, wake up.”

It took longer than he would have expected, but after thirty breaths, Valyn’s eyes flashed open. He lunged forward, snatched Kaden by the wrists, and hurled him backward onto the scree. Kaden went limp. He couldn’t fight a Kettral, not hand to hand, and he could only hope that Valyn understood the situation before he killed him. His brother was snarling, forcing him down, reaching for his belt knife, his eyes inches from Kaden’s own.

His eyes, Kaden realized, staring. Someone burned away all the color in his eyes. He hadn’t noticed before, not in the darkness, not with his focus on Balendin and the approaching Aedolians, but Valyn’s eyes, eyes that had always been oddly dark, had grown darker still. They looked like holes burned into nothingness.

“Balendin’s gone,” Kaden said, his voice calm despite the blade suddenly pressed up against his throat.

“Kaden,” Valyn gasped, searching the surrounding darkness, groping in the dirt for one of his blades. “Where? Where did he go?”

Kaden gestured to the flatbow. “I shot him. He went over the cliff.”

For a long time Valyn just stared, then he nodded, then laughed. “Holy Hull,” he breathed, rocking back onto his heels, freeing Kaden. He let out a loud whoop. “Sweet ’Shael on a stick! How did you do it?”

“I aimed, then pulled the trigger.”

Valyn shook his head. “No, the emotion thing. I’ve been training for battle for years, and I was drowning in anger, and fear, and shit, Kaden … even now you look like you’ve been reading a somewhat dull book.”

“The Shin. They taught me … some skills.”

“I guess they fucking did!” Valyn burst out, catching his brother in a huge hug. Kaden did not return the gesture.

“Don’t we need to be moving?” he asked instead. “I’m not clear on the tactics here, but haste seems at a premium.”

Valyn let him go. “Well, don’t get all mushy on me now,” he muttered.

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity: Valyn slapping the others awake, everyone clutching their heads, then searching desperately for lost weapons, shadows darting through the darkness.

“Kaden,” Valyn gestured, “you’re with me on the bird. It’s the safest place for now, especially if Yurl doubles back. Talal, can you delve yet?”

The leach’s eyes were still glazed, but he rose unsteadily to his feet. “I can go,” he said. “I don’t know … I don’t know about a kenning. But I can go.”

Valyn glanced from Talal to the darkness, then back again, as though wrestling with some decision. When he spoke, however, his voice was sure.

“You’re staying here. And Triste. And Gwenna.”

“Bullshit,” the red-haired woman snapped, stepping forward.

“This is not the time, Gwenna,” Valyn replied. “Talal is busted up worse than he knows, and I’m not leaving him alone. You’re staying.”

Gwenna opened her mouth to argue, then looked over at Talal, who was leaning unsteadily against a boulder. “If you get yourselves killed,” she hissed, turning back to Valyn, “I will come down there and kick the shit out of your corpses.”

“Agreed,” Valyn said.

And then they were running down the short slope to the kettral.

“Step into this,” Valyn shouted, gesturing at a harness. Kaden did as he was told, staring as the bird gathered itself in a great burst of power and leapt into the air. Under other circumstances, the flight would have been terrifying and exhilarating both, but deep inside the vaniate, Kaden felt only calm, distance, as though he were no more than the wind rifling his robes, no more than the snow on the peaks, or the silent clouds scrubbing the sky.

“Pyrre will be down there,” he shouted, pointing toward the southeast. “She said she’d keep the others busy as long as she could.”

“What are you doing with a Skullsworn?” Valyn shouted back.

Kaden spread his hands, at a loss about how to explain. “I’m not sure. She’s on our side.”

Valyn shot him a strange look, but nodded.

It didn’t take long to find the assassin. The enemy Wing had her pinned down in a dead-end canyon about a mile and a half from the site of the Aedolian camp. One of the attacking Kettral had lit a couple of long tubes that looked like sticks, but that burned with a bright, incandescent light, illuminating the entire scene. The blond youth that Kaden took to be the Wing leader had Pyrre hemmed in, his people arranged in a loose semicircle, blocking off any escape. No one, however, had yet dared to step into the lethal circle of the woman’s spinning steel.

“Why haven’t they taken her yet?” Valyn bellowed in Kaden’s ear. “I don’t care how good she is-one arrow and she’s down!”

Kaden shook his head. “They think Tan and I made it to the cave. They need to capture Pyrre alive, to question her.”

Kaden had taken the assassin at her word when she insisted that it was a lot trickier to capture a foe than to kill her. After all, Pyrre was the one getting either captured or killed. Valyn nodded, as if it all made sense.

He flicked a few quick signs to the dark-skinned youth on the far talon, and moments later, the bird dipped into a steep approach. The girl with the bow, she couldn’t have been much more than fifteen, was hanging out into the darkness-ever since Kaden first cut her loose, she seemed to have been aiming or shooting at something-and as they fell on the circle of soldiers from above, she drew and fired, drew and fired, three shots in quick succession, and three of the Kettral collapsed into the dust-dead so quickly, they never had time to clutch at their necks. I never saw a man die before last night, Kaden realized. I didn’t think it would be so easy.

Ut turned at the last moment, just in time for the arrow to glance off his breastplate, falling away into the darkness. The other youth, the Wing leader, dived into the darkness, and then the bird was upon them, shrieking an earsplitting cry, and Valyn was leaping free of the talons, rolling as he hit the ground, a knife in one hand, short sword in the other.

* * *

There hadn’t been much time for elaborate tactics, but the plan had seemed like a good one to Valyn: Take down the Wing’s sniper, flier, and demolitions man first, and then they could deal with the more conventional threats of Ut and Yurl. Valyn’s own Wing could have dropped, of course. It would be nice to have Laith and Annick at his back, but he liked having them in the air better; the altitude gave Annick a better range of attack. As his feet hit the ground, however, he realized the flaw: Ut and Yurl had fled outside the blazing light of the flares, into the darkness. The air support he had counted on was no good if the members of his Wing couldn’t see what was going on. He was on his own.

“That,” came a voice from behind, “is an exceptionally large bird you’ve got.”

Valyn spun to find himself face-to-face with the knife-wielding woman-Pyrre, Kaden had called her. Skullsworn. Valyn eyed the assassin, gauging her quickly. She was breathing heavily, and her clothes were sliced open in a dozen places-whether from this fight or something earlier, it was hard to tell-but she seemed strangely relaxed. The fact that Yurl hadn’t managed to take her spoke well for her abilities, that and the blood on her blades.

“They went that way,” she said, pointing with one of her long knives. “I’ve got a score to settle with the unpleasant gentleman in all the armor, but you’re welcome to kill the other one.”

Valyn considered the offer. Pyrre had helped Kaden, but he didn’t like the idea of relying on an assassin he’d never met before to guard his back. Of course, there wasn’t much to like, and every moment he delayed was a moment Yurl could be slipping farther away or honing an ambush. “All right,” Valyn replied, nodding warily. “Ut’s yours. Yurl’s mine. Just don’t fuck up.”

Pyrre smiled an easy smile. She didn’t look like a murderer. “I could have used that advice a few days ago, before we got ourselves chased into these miserable mountains.”

“Good luck,” he said.

“And with you,” Pyrre replied. “Be careful. That bastard is good.”

Valyn nodded grimly. For weeks now, for months, he’d been biding his time, waiting for just this opportunity, a chance to face Yurl one on one. So much the better that they had flown beyond imperial borders, past the aegis of law and the ambit of Annurian justice, into these unnamed peaks, where there were no trainers or regulations, no blunted blades or codes of conduct, no one to cry foul or stop the fight. It was just what Valyn had longed for, and yet the stark fact remained: Yurl was better with his blades. He was faster and he was stronger. When it was all settled, any blood on the ground was likely to be Valyn’s. It was folly to chase after him, and for a moment Valyn hesitated. He could go back for the rest of his Wing. The other man was alone now, on foot in hostile terrain with minimal provisions. It was pride and folly to pursue him alone. There is wisdom, Hendran wrote, in waiting.

But Valyn was through waiting. The man who had brutalized Ha Lin, who had tried to murder his Wing, to slaughter his brother, to end the Malkeenian line, was only a few paces away. Valyn had tried playing by the rules. For as long as he could remember, he’d tried to weigh his options, to think before acting, to make the wise choice. It had all ended in ashes: Lin dead, himself and his Wing traitors in exile. Yurl might kill him, but what did that matter? He would die eventually, either on the point of a blade or in his bed, and something inside him was stirring, a part of his mind older than conscious thought, quicker and more savage, whispering to him, rasping the same malevolent syllable over and over: death, death, death. Whether the death was his own or Sami Yurl’s no longer seemed to matter.

* * *

The sword came hard at his head-so fast, he barely had time to knock it aside. Were it not for the residual light of the flares flickering behind him, Valyn would have missed it entirely, and as he stumbled backward, trying to regain his balance, Yurl stepped from behind an outcrop.

The other Wing leader’s grin was gone. “You killed my men, Malkeenian.”

“As if you cared,” Valyn said, trying to gain time, to see a way through the other man’s guard.

“It’s an insult,” Yurl replied, swords flashing out as he spoke, one high, one low, probing, pressing. Valyn parried and launched a quick riposte, but Yurl swatted it down contemptuously. “You are an insult,” he continued, circling as he spoke. “Valyn hui’Malkeenian, son of the Emperor, Kettral Wing commander.” He sneered. “And any day I chose, I could have cut you down like grass.”

The swords whistled at Valyn again, a double-wing attack that folded into something else at the last minute. Valyn leaned back, tried to create space to parry just as the steel bit beneath his ribs. The wound wasn’t deep, but the blood was flowing.

“This is my point,” Yurl said, dropping his upper blade to gesture languidly at the wound.

Valyn started to lunge for the opening, then checked himself. It was a trap, just like in the arena, just like on the West Bluffs. Instead of pressing the weak guard, he took a step back, trying to ignore the blood sheeting down his side, trying to think. The blades might do the cutting, but as in all true swordplay, the real fight would be won or lost in the mind. Yurl’s words were as much a part of the thing as his footwork, those taunts as tactical as each feint and false position. Back on the Islands, Valyn always gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the distractions, fighting on in stubborn silence, refusing to be drawn in. Drawn in. He almost laughed. It was a ridiculous notion. He had fled the Eyrie, abandoned his training and his life to come here, to find Yurl and to stop him, to fight this fight. He hadn’t been drawn in; he had hurled himself.

“You’re fucked, you know,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder toward the flares. “Your Wing’s dead. The Aedolians are dead. Even if you kill me, you’re fucked.”

A grimace twisted Yurl’s face. “Then I’ll have to settle for the joy of gutting you,” he said, sliding into a folding fan attack, the feint blade slicing up and across while the true thrust came from beneath. Valyn battered it aside, but Yurl moved into the space, pressing forward, forward, raining down blows from above, from the side, twisting through obscure Manjari forms Valyn scarcely recognized and could barely block. The assault seemed to last hours, and when it was finished, Valyn could feel his breath tight in his chest. Another wound seeped blood down his shoulder.

“I’m going to kill you,” Yurl said, spitting onto the ground, “just the way I killed your little bitch down in the Hole when Balendin was done with her.”

“You,” Valyn said, his heart a block of ice threatening to choke him.

Yurl shrugged. “Along with the leach.”

It was just more talk, more tactics, but Valyn could feel the rage rabid inside him. His teeth were bared as though he planned to leap on the other man and tear out his throat. Hot blood slammed behind his eyes in a frantic, murderous tattoo.

“Too bad she’s not here to help you now,” Yurl continued with a shrug. “Might have made for a passably interesting fight.”

Oh, Valyn realized, the memory striking him like a slap across the face. Oh.

As the pain flared in his shoulder and side, he shifted to his left. He was losing blood, and with it, speed. Yurl’s next attack would come hard and fast, which meant Valyn had one play left, and suddenly, he knew what it had to be. A vision of Ha Lin’s smile ghosted through his mind. He was only ten years old when she first saved his ass, dragging him through the end of a long swim after his legs cramped, keeping his head above the slapping chop, alternately cursing and encouraging him, her pinched child’s face angry, stubborn, determined. That was the first time she’d bailed him out, but it wasn’t the last. Even now, even dead, the girl wouldn’t quit.

With a roar, he threw himself into a bull’s horns lunge. It was a desperate gambit, an insane attack that left him open to all manner of riposte. Only, in order to riposte, Yurl would need to settle back, to set his leg, his left leg. As Valyn fell through the night, both blades outstretched, he could hear Ha Lin’s voice soft in his ear: I got in some shots of my own … the left ankle … maybe something you could work with.

Yurl’s face twisted in confusion at the unexpected lunge. His step back was basic reflex, the kind of thing drilled into every Kettral over thousands of days in the arena, the motion trained and trained and trained until it was threaded into muscle and bone alike. His body obeyed the training flawlessly, sliding fluidly down and away, dropping him into the standard off-guard crouch as he swept aside the horns of Valyn’s attack, the horns that weren’t the true attack at all.

Valyn rolled, ignoring the stone scraping over his wounds, lashing out with a foot at that flexed ankle. It was a feeble blow, off balance and poorly timed, but he connected just as Yurl was transferring his weight, loading the foot for the counterstrike. The ankle buckled. Yurl staggered, his own blade sliding just wide of Valyn’s neck, his face twisted with rage, and fury, and, beneath it all, another emotion blossoming, something new: the sweet, hideous flower of fear.

“Lin told me you weren’t the only one to land some blows up on the bluffs,” Valyn said, dragging himself back to his feet.

Yurl snarled wordlessly, dropped to a knee, struggled unsteadily to his feet, raised his blades once more, hesitated, then turned and stumbled into the deeper darkness beyond the light of the flares.

The darkness, Valyn thought grimly, is my territory. Ever since the Hole, the darkness is my home.

He closed his eyes and let the scents and sounds of the chill night wash over him. Yurl was out there-not far. Valyn could smell him-the sweat, and blood, and steel, and beneath it all, the acrid animal odor of fear. A feral smile tugged at his lips. Hendran would never approve of racing into the dark, but then, Hendran hadn’t gorged himself on the bilious tar of the black egg. He let out a low growl, turned away from the light, and slipped into the endless realm of shadow.

There were a hundred smells: stone, and dirty snow, and the whisper of rain from the clouds above. A thousand currents of air tugged at his skin, teased the hair on his arms, on his neck. With some sense he knew but failed to comprehend, he could make out dozens of faintly adumbrated forms, echoes of shapes. Beneath his feet he could feel the stones grating against his boots. Bared swords held before him, he turned silently in the night, slowly, slowly.… He could feel it radiating from a few paces away-heat, where there should be no heat. Breathing. That same sick fear lacing the hard scent of the mountains. Yurl.

He felt rather than heard the blade slicing through the darkness, felt the air eddy and part and, without a thought, flung himself into a rolling lunge as the steel hacked a huge arc out of the space above him, smashing sparks from the rock. Behind him, Yurl cursed, and Valyn turned silently to face his foe.

The Wing commander had both blades drawn, holding them in front of him in the defensive half guard the Kettral had studied for fighting blind. He can’t see me, Valyn realized. He knows I’m here, but he can’t see me. Evidently Talal had been right. All slarn eggs conferred a benefit, but none so great as the great black monstrosity from which Valyn had drunk.

A hundred paces off, the flares were still sputtering, and somewhere off to the left, Pyrre and Ut hacked at each other, the sharp sound of steel grinding against steel shattering the night again and again. Valyn could hear the Aedolian cursing and gasping, and beneath that the skullsworn’s quieter, quick breaths. None of it mattered. Yurl was before him now, fumbling blindly.

“It’s over,” Valyn said.

The gravel beneath Yurl’s feet crunched as he shifted. Again, there was a swirl of air, a whisper of breath, a hint of fear, and Valyn knocked his attacker’s sword aside. He felt at home, he realized, here in the great darkness, and closed his eyes, allowing the sounds and scents of the world to wash over him. His tongue flicked out, tasting the night.

Hull, what did you do to me? he wondered, but it was too late for such questions. It had been too late for a long time now, he realized, for what seemed like forever. The strange alchemy in his blood wasn’t the whole story, either. Something in his heart had withered when he found Ha Lin’s body crumpled on the floor of the cave, some part of him that loved the light and hoped for the morning had broken. After all, when he carried his friend out into the sun, she was still dead. Better to stay in the darkness. Tears were running down his cheeks, blurring his vision, but then, he didn’t need his vision.

“You can’t win,” Valyn said, following the echo of Yurl’s heat. “Drop your blades now, tell me what you know, and I’ll give you a clean death.”

A clean death. Even as he said the words, he felt that they were a lie. He wanted to cut the youth down and tear him apart. He wanted Yurl to hurt, to cry out in the darkness and to have only his own agony for an answer.

“Go to ’Shael,” the Wing leader snarled, lashing out with both swords at once in an attack the instructors back on Qarsh called the Windmill’s Vanes. It was either a very arrogant move, or a very desperate one. Valyn rolled to the side easily, dodging the blow. Even from two paces away, he could feel the labored breath, the panicked heat rolling off his foe, could taste the terror.

It feels good, Valyn realized, some part of his brain recoiling at the thought even as he bared his teeth in a snarl and stepped forward.

“Who’s behind the plot?” he demanded.

“If I tell you, you’ll kill me,” Yurl replied, retreating through the darkness, his voice tight and desperate.

With one quick, clean motion, Valyn lashed out. He felt the steel bite, severing flesh, then tendon, then bone, and half a heartbeat later, Yurl screamed and a sword clattered to the rocky ground. His wrist, Valyn thought, nodding to himself. There was blood on the air now, Valyn realized, inhaling deeply-sharp, coppery blood.

“I’m going to kill you anyway,” he said, taking another step forward.

“All right,” Yurl gasped. His other blade fell to the rock. “All right. You win. I surrender.”

“I don’t want you to surrender,” Valyn replied. “I want you to tell me who’s behind the plot.”

He sniffed the air, turned his cheek to the darkness to feel the breeze waft over his skin, then lashed out with his own sword once more, slicing clean through the youth’s other wrist. Somewhere far in the back of his mind, Hendran was arguing for tactical calm and useful prisoners, while even further back, other voices, his father, his mother, mouthed words like mercy, and decency. Valyn silenced them. His parents were dead now, and so was Hendran. Ha Lin had played by the rules, and she’d been humiliated, beaten, and murdered for her trouble. Mercy and decency were fine words, but they had no place here in the darkness, alone with his cornered quarry.

Yurl let out a long, agonized cry, the keening of a trapped and desperate animal.

“You can’t kill me!” he sobbed. “You can’t kill me. Not if you want to know who’s behind what happened here. You have to keep me alive!”

“We’ll keep Ut alive,” Valyn growled, but as the words left his lips, he realized the sound of fighting behind him had disappeared. Where steel had echoed off steel, he could hear only the vast sweep of wind over snow and stone. Someone was dead. Valyn sniffed the air. Pyrre was moving toward him, the scent of her hair light on the night breeze. Balendin, Adiv, and now Ut, all gone. Yurl looked like the last prisoner available to them, but though Valyn knew it made sense, the blood coursed cold and dark through his veins. He didn’t want a prisoner.

“No one else knows the whole thing,” Yurl moaned. He was on his knees now, sobbing desperately. “Please. You have to keep me alive.”

“Tell me what you know,” Valyn said, “and I’ll take you back to the Eyrie for justice.” Another lie, tripping off his lips like song.

“All right. It’s a plot … it’s…”

“I know it’s a plot,” Valyn replied. “Who is behind it?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know his name. But he’s Csestriim. I know that. He’s Csestriim.”

Valyn paused. The Csestriim were ancient history, the last of them slaughtered more than a thousand years earlier. Yurl’s claim was insanity, and yet … groveling in the dirt, his hands lopped from his wrists, he couldn’t be lying.

“What else?” Valyn pressed.

“I don’t know anything else,” Yurl moaned. “That’s it. That’s all I know. Please, Valyn. I’m begging you.”

Eyes still closed, Valyn stepped closer, close enough to press the point of his dagger against Yurl’s gut. The youth had pissed himself, and the scent of blood and urine mingled, sharp and acrid in the cool night air.

“You’re begging me?” he asked, voice little more than a whisper.

“I’m begging you,” Yurl sobbed.

“What about Ha Lin? Did she beg you?”

“I’m sorry about Lin. It’s not what you think. It was never what you thought.”

“Did she beg you?” Valyn demanded, pushing the knife forward until it just broke the skin.

“I don’t know! I can’t remember!” He pawed at Valyn with the bloody stumps, but Valyn brushed them away.

“Not good enough,” he ground out, driving the knife a hair deeper. “Down in the Hole … did you help Balendin kill her?”

“I didn’t,” Yurl babbled. “I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t-”

Valyn shoved the knife a little more. “Still not good enough.”

“Sweet Eira’s mercy, Valyn,” Yurl wailed, stretching out his lopped arms hopelessly, “what’s good enough for you? What’s fucking good enough?”

Valyn considered the question. What’s good enough? Once, he would have known the answer. Before his father was murdered. Before he climbed the stairs to the airless attic where Amie’s body hung. Before he carried Lin from the dark mouth of Hull’s Hole. Justice? Revenge? He shook his head. Now …

“I don’t know,” he replied, burying the blade to its hilt in Yurl’s guts, feeling the muscles clench helplessly around it, then twisting it free. “Maybe nothing’s good enough anymore.”

The youth let out a long, ragged moan, then sagged to the ground. Valyn straightened, wiping the dagger on his blacks. In the cloud-draped pall of night, he couldn’t see the corpse, couldn’t see what he had done, but then, he didn’t need to see. He slipped the blades back into their sheaths. It was all around him on the midnight air-blood and offal, desperation and death. He could smell it, he realized with a shudder, part fear, part satisfaction. He could taste it.