The Providence of Fire

16

“Kill them,” Annick said, gesturing to the Urghul. “We can’t bring them, and we can’t leave them.”

Valyn had gathered his Wing a hundred paces off from the camp, leaving Pyrre to guard the tied and kneeling prisoners. In the three days since they sent Suant’ra south, there had been little to do but wait, rest, and worry. To Valyn’s great relief, Gwenna had come to by the end of the first day, but she was clearly in no shape to travel; she could barely walk a circuit of the camp without feeling dizzy and nauseated. Talal’s leg was healing, healing faster than Valyn would have expected, and Valyn’s own wound was already knitted closed. The slarn eggs, the leach suggested. It’s possible they made us stronger, more resilient. Valyn had mulled that possibility with a mixture of hope and unease. Talal was right. A deep puncture wound to the shoulder should have taken at least a week to knit up properly, not days.

On the other hand, they were hardly invincible. Talal still limped, Gwenna still slept more than half the hours of the day, and truth be told, Valyn wasn’t sure he was ready for a forced ride across a thousand miles of steppe either. Pain lanced through his shoulder whenever he raised his elbow, which meant fighting with a single blade and forget about the bow.

So, they waited, rested, and worried.

On the second day, another Kettral Wing passed overhead. Valyn hunched down into his bison cloak, shaded his face with his hand, and tried to look Urghul while the bird circled once, then headed south. He let out a long, uneasy breath, feeling like one of the marmots that foraged for food on the grasslands. They, too, kept looking up at the sky, not that it did them much good. Valyn had seen three taken by eagles in a single afternoon.

By the third day, Gwenna was insisting she was ready to ride, and Valyn himself was itching to get moving, pain or no. They were already going to miss the meeting with Kaden back in Annur, miss it by weeks, but that was no reason to sit any longer than necessary. Valyn insisted on one more night of rest, and on the morning of the fourth day he gave the order to set out.

It was easy enough to break down what they wanted from the camp, to put the horses on long lines, and pack a week’s worth of extra food, compliments of the Urghul. Then they needed to decide what to do with the Urghul themselves. That was proving a more difficult proposition.

“I don’t like it,” Laith said, shaking his head. He’d lost his habitual good humor when ’Ra left, and the question of the prisoners had done nothing to lighten his mood. “In fact, I fucking hate it. Three of them are kids, and the rest…” He gestured at the kneeling figures. “It’s not like we’re killing them in a fight.” He blew out a long breath. “But we have to do it. We have to kill them.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Gwenna growled.

Valyn nodded slowly. “Gwenna’s right. Whatever Hendran said on the matter, they are our prisoners, our responsibility. It’s our decision.”

“Fine,” Laith said, “then I’ve decided that we need to kill them. Is that enough responsibility for you?”

“No,” Valyn replied, reining in his own anger, keeping his voice level. “It’s not. You said it already. Three of them are kids, Laith. Children.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Annick said. “Taking them with us is too risky, and if we leave them, they could follow.”

“On what?” Valyn demanded. “We’re taking the ’Kent-kissing horses. I don’t care how fit these sons of bitches are, by the end of the morning we’ll be gone.”

“And what if they talk?” Laith demanded. “What if another batch of Urghul finds them and asks what happened to their horses?”

“Then we’ll fight them,” Gwenna said. “We already fought these, and it was a pretty short fucking fight.”

Annick shook her head, a curt, dismissive motion. “This is a tiny group. Some of the taamu number into the hundreds.”

“Then we run,” Gwenna insisted. “We retreat.”

Laith barked an incredulous laugh. “We outride the ’Kent-kissing Urghul on their own steppe on their own horses? How do you expect that to go?”

Valyn took a deep breath, then spoke. “This is beside the point.”

“Seems to me it’s exactly the point,” Laith said. “What are the risks? How do we minimize them? I seem to remember an entire year spent studying this shit back on the Islands.”

“We talked about minimizing risks in legitimate fights,” Valyn said. “Not about murdering kids who can’t hurt us.”

“What is a legitimate fight?” Annick asked.

“A mission,” Valyn said. “Against the enemy. Not just an uncomfortable situation we crashed into the middle of.”

“The Urghul are the enemy,” Laith pointed out. “They boil people alive. They cut off your eyelids. The Eyrie has been flying missions over the White for years now.”

“Not to kill kids,” Valyn replied. He held up a hand to forestall the flier’s objection. “Why did you join the Kettral?”

Laith shook his head. “I don’t know. Because they showed up and told me I could fly massive killer birds. Because they’re the Kettral, for ’Shael’s sake.”

“And if the Urghul had birds? Would you fly for the Urghul?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Everything I just got done telling you. They’re barbarians, Valyn. Do you remember anything about their religion, their blood worship? If our fight had gone the other way, they’d be flaying us right now, taking us apart strip by fleshy strip. That’s why we have to kill them.”

Valyn shook his head. “That’s why we can’t.”

Laith stared. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

It was one question too many, and something inside Valyn, some wall that had been holding back both the anger and the words, gave way, crumbling as though before a great wave. “We are not them, Laith!” he shouted. “We are not her!” he went on, stabbing a finger at Huutsuu, “or her!” at Pyrre. “We can kill people, sure. We spent a whole lot of time learning to kill people, and we’re good at it. But lots of people can kill people. Pyrre has been fucking killing people since the day we found her. The thing that makes us Kettral is something else: we kill the right people.”

Gwenna was nodding furiously, but Annick brushed aside the tirade with the back of her hand. “Right and wrong. Just a question of which side you’re on.”

“No,” Valyn said, rounding on her. “No, it’s not. If that’s true, then why did we even come here? Why did we leave the Eyrie and rescue Kaden? Why do we give a pickled shit who sits on the Unhewn Throne? If it doesn’t matter, we could hire out right now as mercenaries to Anthera or the Manjari. We could make a tidy fortune telling them everything we know about the Kettral!” Despite the chill breeze, he was sweating beneath the heavy bison coat. With an effort, he brought his voice back down, unclenched his fists. “We don’t do that because it does matter what side you fight on. It does matter who sits the Unhewn Throne. People like Sami Yurl and Balendin-they need to be stopped. They are bad. So were the Csestriim. So were the Atmani.” He shook his head, suddenly weary. The shoulder wound ached. Everything ached. “I joined the Kettral so I could defend Annur, and I wanted to defend Annur because it is better than the Blood Cities or Anthera, better than the Manjari or the tribes of the Waist.”

“Spare me a lecture on the virtues of our great empire,” Laith said. The words were dismissive, but the fire had gone out of his resistance.

“It’s a short lecture,” Valyn said. “We have laws. Laws that keep the most powerful among us from destroying the weak and the unlucky.”

Laith shook his head. “You really did grow up in a palace, didn’t you?”

“Am I right?” Valyn asked, ignoring the gibe.

“Annur’s great and powerful exploit the weak and poor all the time,” the flier snapped. “I know, my family is both. Your father raised taxes on blacksmiths-did you know that?” He didn’t wait for Valyn to answer. “Of course you didn’t. The thing is, the Emperor of Annur didn’t bother differentiating between the huge city blacksmiths with dozens of apprentices and small shops with one man and a forge. A little oversight that put my father into debt.” He shook his head in disgust. “My father went to a moneylender. The bastard was happy enough to supply the coin but at a rate no human being could possibly repay. My father worked eight years at it, eight years without a single day of rest, and he died at his fucking forge, more in debt than when he started.”

Valyn stared. In all his years with the Kettral, in all their days of training and nights nursing their wounds, he’d never heard Laith tell the story.

“Look,” he began slowly, uncertain how to respond. “The empire isn’t a perfect state…”

The flier raised his brows. “But this was unusual? The exception?” He jerked a finger at Talal. “What about him? The citizens of our good and noble empire hunt down and kill leaches in huge, gleeful mobs. No trial, no law-just a fire or a rope.”

Talal nodded slowly. He hadn’t said a word throughout the entire argument, watching silently, arms crossed over his chest. “Annur has flaws,” he said quietly. “Deep flaws. There are liars and murderers to go around.” He glanced over toward the prisoners. “I do not want to be one of them.”

“Well, fuck,” Laith said, shaking his head. “Neither do I. I just don’t want them coming after us.”

“That’s the chance we take for doing the right thing.”

“Fuck,” the flier said again.

“Does that mean you agree?”

Laith blew out a long breath, then nodded reluctantly. Valyn turned to Annick.

“What about you?”

“I told you what I think,” she said. “You’re the Wing leader.”

“All right then,” Valyn said. “We take the horses, take most of the food, take an api so that we look like real Urghul. I’ll retie the knots holding the prisoners, something they can wriggle out of in two or three days. We head north.…”

“I thought we were going west,” Gwenna said. “There’s nothing north but steppe, then ice, then icy ocean.”

“We head north,” Valyn said again, “half a day, in case they decide to follow our tracks. We’ll tack west when we find a stream to follow.”

He turned on his heel before anyone else could object, leaving his Wing to their preparations. The prisoners were on the other side of the camp, giving Huutsuu plenty of time to stare at Valyn as he approached. Pyrre glanced over when he was close.

“Let me guess, you can’t bring yourself to kill them.”

“We’re tying them up,” Valyn said tersely. “Heading north.”

The Skullsworn smiled, then patted him on the wounded shoulder. “How did I know?”

“I will find you,” Huutsuu said, as Valyn knelt to check the knots binding her wrists and ankles. “You are a fool not to listen to your people.”

“If I listened to them,” Valyn said, cinching the knot, “you’d be dead.”

“You are soft.”

“You’re the one tied up.”

* * *

For the better part of two weeks, the Wing made good time, driving westward each day, camping in the low folds between the hills at night. The Urghul horses, though small, were sure-footed and utterly indefatigable. Valyn had wondered how often he would need to rest the creatures, but discovered, to his dismay, that by the time he called a halt each night it was his own aching legs and back that needed respite. Judging from the groaning and stretching of the rest of his Wing, he wasn’t the only one.

He’d charted a course just north of the White River, close enough that they could often see the frothing surface; distant enough that they wouldn’t run smack into any Urghul watering their horses. There had been some discussion of going south. The fastest route back to Annur would be to ride hard for the Bend, then take a ship for the capital. It was also the most obvious way. If the Eyrie had any hint that Valyn was still alive, they’d have someone watching the docks, watching the walls, watching the whole ’Kent-kissing city. Riding overland to the west was less risky. Less risky, but much, much longer.

The steppe stretched all the way to the horizon, a great green sea with hills like swells. Aside from the occasional limestone outcrop or stand of stunted trees, there were no landmarks, no mountains or forests, just massive emptiness spread beneath the bowl of the sky. Even the streams looked the same-narrow, low-banked, stony brooks draining south into the White River.

Valyn found the open space unnerving. It offered nowhere to hide, nowhere to make a stand. The low hills rose and fell just enough to obscure the surrounding territory without providing any shelter. They could be riding parallel to an Urghul taamu for all Valyn could tell, the horsemen just out of sight over the next fold, and his neck grew sore from constantly pivoting, endlessly scanning the green horizon.

After a few days, Talal pointed to the south. Valyn squinted. A line of golden hills flanked them in the far distance, miles and miles beyond the river. Sand, he realized, the huge, undulating dunes of the Seghir Desert. Entire armies had been swallowed up in the Seghir, foreign and Annurian, bones and armor lost beneath the shifting sand. Even north of the river, where his own Wing rode, the soil began to turn dry and cracked, forcing Valyn to alter course, breaking away from the river for greener grass while still pushing west.

Twice they spotted herds of bison in the distance, thousands of shaggy brown beasts three times the size of the horses they rode. Despite the curving horns, the creatures seemed docile enough, lazily cropping the long grass, pausing occasionally to snuffle at the air. When they broke into a run, the whole mass wheeling and charging away into the distance, Valyn could feel the ground quiver beneath his feet while the air trembled with a sound like thunder.

Near the end of the fourth day, they pulled up atop a low hill just in time to see a much larger band of riders-maybe three or four hundred-also headed west, probably half a day’s ride ahead of them. Despite the size of the group, they were hammering hard, even harder than Valyn’s Wing, the herd of horses kicking up a haze of dust that hovered over the steppe like a storm cloud, dimming the noon sun. Valyn counted three more taamu after that, all headed west, moving fast. It was easy enough to stay clear, to avoid the hilltops and rises, but the sight of so many Urghul on the move made him nervous.

“Where do you think the bastards are going?” Gwenna asked.

“No idea,” Valyn replied, shaking his head. “Hopefully not the same place we are.”

The lack of cover during the long, sun-baked days made Valyn sweat, but it was the rain, finally, that did them in.

He had called a halt early. Though daylight lingered, the east wind reeked of storm, Gwenna, for all that she refused to complain, looked ready to fall out of the saddle, and Valyn himself didn’t feel far behind. As Hendran wrote, There is speed in slowness. Much as Valyn chafed to be back in Annur, to find Kaden, to find whoever was behind his father’s murder, and the monks’, and Ha Lin’s, there were miles of steppe and little to be gained by trying to cross it all in one frenetic push.

The rain started just after dark. It would have been nice to set up the api or build a fire, but fires meant light and smoke, and the api would do nothing but trap half the Wing and limit its visibility. Better to be cold and ready than warm and dead, and so they wrapped themselves in their bison cloaks, the wet hides chilly and reeking, checked weapons, then sat down to gnaw through strips of dried meat and chunks of hard Urghul cheese before falling asleep.

Valyn took the first watch. The wound in his shoulder was healing, but still stabbed at him whenever he moved wrong. The others had settled into a rough circle, as though around the memory of a campfire. Asleep, wrapped in the huge cloaks, they looked younger than they were, more innocent, almost like children. Even Pyrre, with her graying hair, might have been a fishmonger or a merchant rather than a vicious death-priest with her hands steeped in blood. It seemed like weeks since Valyn had had the space and time to really think about his Wing, about what they’d given up when they fled the Eyrie, about what they faced in the weeks ahead. The responsibility clamped down on him like a hard fall frost. Then the rain began in earnest.

The heavy drops soaked his hair in a few heartbeats, chilling his face, seeping down the back of his cloak even as they churned the ground to mud, turned the night air to a black, sheeting murk. Valyn sat up straighter, ignoring the cold settling into his bones, a hand on his belt knife. He didn’t realize how accustomed he’d grown to his heightened hearing, but now, with the quiet roar of a million raindrops spattering against the earth, he felt deaf, disoriented, vulnerable.

He rose to his feet, slipping a blade from beneath the cloak, and walked to the top of a small rise. Whatever he might have seen beneath a full moon or stars was scrubbed out utterly by the downpour. There was the rain and the earth at his feet, nothing more. After a long pause, he turned back to the camp, unease tickling at his neck, sickening his gut. Gwenna was cursing, trying to get comfortable, and Talal and Pyrre kept shifting, searching for a position that might keep off the worst of the rain.

To ’Shael with it, Valyn thought. No one’s sleeping anyway.

They could be miserable on the horses just as well as on the ground. They could rest again when the weather cleared. For all that they needed a break, they were Kettral. A long night on horseback wasn’t going to kill any of them. Besides, he didn’t like sitting still when there was no way to mount an effective guard. They might stumble over someone on horseback, but at least they’d be mounted. At least they’d be ready.

He was just crouching down to rouse Annick when the drumming of the rain resolved, suddenly, horrifyingly, into the drumming of hooves. He spun about, desperately raising his blade as the mounted Urghul, lances leveled, soaked hair streaming behind, screaming and ululating, galloped down the low hill and into the miserable camp.

* * *

It was Huutsuu. Of course. But not just Huutsuu.

Laith and Annick had been right. Another taamu, much larger, five or six hundred at least, had found her far to the east. Everything Valyn knew about the Urghul suggested that they should have killed her, offered her up to Meshkent in some hideous ceremony, but evidently everything he learned had been worse than useless. Not only did they not kill her and her people, the larger tribe offered horses and help in hunting down the Annurians.

Valyn managed to kill two in the fury of the first assault, and Pyrre, somehow, took down four more with her knives. The rest of the Kettral were taken utterly off guard. Within heartbeats, they found themselves ringed with dozens of spearpoints, a sharp, shifting collar inches from their throats. Even then, they looked ready to fight, hands on knives or blades, Annick clutching her half-drawn bow, death in her eyes until Valyn, the words like stones on his tongue, gave the order to stand down.

* * *

In another place, captured by another foe, the fact that they were still alive might have been a comfort. Not here. Valyn remembered his training clearly enough: the Urghul took captives only to offer them later, as sacrifice to Kwihna. If half the stories were true, they might well wish they’d been killed instead of captured. There was a simplicity, a finality to a foot of sharp steel in the gut. The same couldn’t be said of flaying, disemboweling, or burning, the standard fates that awaited an Urghul captive.

All the more reason, Valyn thought grimly, testing his bonds for the hundredth time, to get uncaptured.

Not that he’d arrived at any grand plan for escape. There were no prisons on the steppe, no brigs or dungeons, but the Urghul were thorough enough when it came to restraining their prisoners. Along with the rest of his Wing, Valyn was bound at the wrists and ankles, the rawhide cinched so tight he lost feeling immediately, then tossed over the back of a horse and tied in place. His head dangled down by the beast’s belly, so low that the front hooves threatened to strike him when the animal broke into a canter, making it almost impossible to see anything except the dark mud as they rode. With every stride, the horse’s spine battered his ribs. His wounded shoulder felt ready to rip from the socket. The Urghul had stripped their cloaks, and the frigid rain soaked him until he trembled uncontrollably.

The pain was constant, staggering, but the pain was the least of it. Over and over again as the horses cantered north through the night and storm, Valyn ran through his decisions: leaving the bird, letting the prisoners live, riding west rather than south. He’d made a mistake, that much was clear as a knife to the eye, but it was hard to know what, exactly, he could have done differently. Even lashed to the horse’s back, he couldn’t imagine killing the children in Huutsuu’s camp. And the bird … if they’d tried to fly south, the Flea would have found them, killed them.

It’s done, he growled at himself after a while. You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now.

It was difficult enough just not to pass out, but, with much straining, Valyn managed to twist his head and half raise his torso, the joints of his arms screaming as he stretched up and back, searching for his companions in the driving rain. There were scores of Urghul, a mass of shifting horseflesh and riders, and though the storm had started to abate, he caught only a glimpse of Laith and Gwenna, trussed like sacks of grain over the backs of their own horses.

The Urghul finally called a halt in the chill gray hour just before dawn. When the horse went still, Valyn thought he was dreaming at first, that his mind had lifted clear of the constant stabbing misery of his body. Then someone sliced the cord holding him up, and he tumbled to the ground, unable to bring his dead arms up to block the fall. The Kettral, of course, had trained him for captivity. Though he was still bound at the wrists and ankles, he began flexing his legs, drawing them up to his chest, then lowering them, over and over. Then his arms. He knew how to fight with tied hands, and if the opening presented itself, he intended to be ready. His frozen muscles groaned in protest. The Urghul were laughing, he realized, watching him writhe on the ground like a worm. He ignored the sound, kept moving, though the action ground his face against the stones and wet earth.

Just when he’d gone from shaking to simply trembling, just as he’d managed to stop biting his tongue with chattering teeth, someone seized him by the neck, then wrestled him roughly to his feet. When he managed to straighten up, he found himself staring at Huutsuu. Or, to be more precise, at Huutsuu’s horse. The ksaabe who had dragged him up stepped back, as though to offer Valyn and his captor a measure of intimacy, but the Urghul woman hadn’t bothered to dismount. She sat her horse lazily, short spear balanced in the crook of her arm, the thin line of a smile creasing her face.

“I told you this. I told you I would find you.”

Valyn glanced at the spear, then the horse, gauging the distance between himself and the rider. Though his feet were still tied, he could probably grab the weapon, rip it out of her hands or pull her off the horse, maybe even plant it in her chest. He opened and closed his hands. They were still numb, but they seemed to work.

And then what?

He glanced over his shoulder, able, for the first time, to make sense of the milling bodies around him. Huutsuu had brought him to a sprawling Urghul camp many times larger than the one in which he’d found her. Valyn stared. Truth be told, the place was more like a town than a camp, with hundreds of api thrown up haphazardly among the cook fires and hobbled horses, men and women riding to and fro, even children darting about between the tents, pale legs and faces spattered with mud. The place reeked of burning horse dung and cooking horseflesh, wet hide and wet mud. Pennants of fur and feather whipped from long lances planted in the earth. Men and women gathered between tents and around fires, tended to their horses or their children, calling to one another in their odd, singsong language. There must have been a thousand Urghul, maybe more.

Valyn turned his attention back to Huutsuu, leaning back slowly on his heels, forcing himself to stay still, to check his own rage. Even if he managed to kill the woman, he’d still be tied up, trussed like a pig for whatever happened next.

This is not the time, he told himself silently, repeating the words in his head as though rehearsing them again and again could keep him from folly. This is not the time.

“Where are we?” he asked instead, jerking his head at the surrounding camp.

Huutsuu smiled. “These are my people.”

“I thought your people hated large camps. I thought you lived in taamu, not nations.”

The Urghul woman shrugged. “We did. Not anymore.”

Before Valyn could make sense of that, other riders pulled up beside them, each Urghul trailing a horse with a sodden human shape lashed across the back. Relief mingled with fury, Valyn watched as, one by one, the other members of his Wing were cut from their horses, then dumped unceremoniously on the ground. The rest of the Urghul, like Huutsuu, refused to dismount, watching impassively as the horses shifted beneath them, their hooves making sucking sounds in the mud.

Annick was the first up, struggling to her knees, then her feet. She moved awkwardly, as though she had strained or torn something during the long ride, but Valyn could see her testing the rawhide at her wrists as she stood, searching for some weakness. Gwenna cursed the Urghul until one of the riders knocked her across the back of the head with the butt of his spear, sending her reeling into the mud once more. Talal got to his feet slowly, silent and intent. Valyn studied the leach, then flicked a sign: Your well?

Talal made an almost imperceptible nod.

So, Valyn thought, allowing himself a small smile, that’s something.

Before he could respond, however, two new Urghul rode up. The taller of them handed a waterskin to Huutsuu without a word, and she, in turn, tossed it to Valyn.

“Drink,” she said as he caught it awkwardly.

He eyed the bladder. He knew from experience what a single day without water could do. If he was going to stay sharp, alert, he needed to drink. He locked eyes with Huutsuu, raised the skin to his mouth, then tilted it back.

At first, there was nothing but the delicious wash of cold water as he sucked it down, his body greedy for the drink. Only after a few swallows did he finally taste the adamanth, the root’s bitter residue roughening his tongue.

Huutsuu smiled as she watched him pause.

“For the leach,” she said, gesturing to the waterskin. “My people, too, have such creatures.”

For a moment, Valyn contemplated draining the full skin, draining it or ripping it open on one of the Urghul spears. The adamanth wouldn’t do him any harm, of course-it might even ease the ache in his shoulder, in his bruised ribs-but the strong infusion would cut Talal off entirely from his well. The Kettral used an even more concentrated form of the tea, but simply boiling the root would prove more than effective. Clearly, the Urghul didn’t know which member of his Wing to be wary of, but it hardly mattered. They would make them all drink.

Valyn hefted the skin in his hands, testing its weight, then discarded the idea of destroying it. Adamanth was common enough-no more than a weed, really-and one could find it in ditches and swamps from the Waist to the steppe. If he threw away one skin, the Urghul would simply produce another. He glanced at Talal. The leach’s eyes were wary, grave, but he just shrugged. Valyn turned back to Huutsuu, matching her stare as he drank long and full from the skin. At least he could deny her the sight of his own disappointment.

As the Urghul passed the skin among the prisoners, Valyn considered the camp once more, then his captors.

“What happens next?” he asked.

Huutsuu gestured at the forest of tents. “We pack, then we ride.”

“Ride where?”

“West.”

“What’s west?”

“Long Fist,” the woman replied.

“What in Hull’s name is Long Fist?”

“You will learn that when you meet him.”

So the Urghul weren’t planning to sacrifice them right away. Of course, there was no telling how far west they planned to ride. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“Is that where the rest of the taamu are going?” Valyn asked. “West? To meet Long Fist?”

“Too many questions,” Huutsuu said, waving a hand at three of the younger Urghul. “Take them. Put them with the other one. Watch them close. They are a soft people, but fast.”

“The other one?” Valyn demanded, shaking his head, trying to make sense of it. “Who’s the other one?”

Huutsuu smiled. “Go. See.”

The Annurian prisoner was tied up a dozen paces beyond the last row of api. The Urghul had bound his hands to his feet, forcing him into a hunched crouch. It wouldn’t have been horrible at first, but a day, even half a day bent double like that would be enough to crack most men and women. Worse, despite the chill drizzle, they’d stripped him of his shirt. The man clearly hadn’t eaten anything in days. Valyn could count the knobs of his spine, the ribs, could count the seeping gashes in his skin where he’d been whipped. The prisoner didn’t look up as the horses approached. He could have been knocked out. Maybe he thought there was nothing to see.

“Who is it?” Valyn demanded, turning to the young rider, the taabe, who guarded him.

“Warrior,” the taabe sneered. “Great warrior. Like you.”

The other Urghul laughed.

“When we get out of here,” Laith said, shaking his head, “when we get a bird, I am coming back, and I am going to kill every one of these miserable bastards.”

“Might take a long time,” Valyn said, glancing over his shoulder. “There are millions.”

“I’ll help him,” Gwenna growled.

“Me, too,” the prisoner said, without bothering to raise his head. “I bet we’d make a good team.”

Valyn froze, chill rain trickling down the back of his neck, making him shiver. The man’s voice was hollow, weak, but there was something there.… He took a step back, looking for space, ignoring the sharp spearpoint pressing against his back.

“So you lived after all,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

Balendin Ainhoa raised his head. A massive bruise purpled the side of his face, half closing one eye. His upper lip was split, and, high on his shoulder, a mirror of Valyn’s own wound, the half-healed scar left by Kaden’s crossbow bolt leaked pus and blood. If the leach was bothered by his injuries, however, he didn’t show it. “Of course I lived. What did Hendran say? If you haven’t seen the body, don’t count the kill.”

“You shit-licking whoreson,” Gwenna snarled, lunging forward, her Urghul captors forgotten. One of the horsemen extended a spear and she went down face-first in the mud.

Balendin just raised his brows, his bonds not permitting much else. “I see that you’re not getting along with our hosts any better than I am. I guess that means we’re on the same side. Again.” He started to smile, then grimaced as his lip cracked open, bleeding anew.

“We were never on the same side,” Valyn said. Despite the cold, his skin blazed. His skin and his blood. Even the breath in his lungs seemed to burn. Like Gwenna, he’d nearly forgotten the surrounding horsemen. Whatever the Urghul were, whatever they were planning, this was the man who had murdered Amie and Ha Lin, who had come so close to murdering Kaden. Everything-their flight from the Eyrie, the Flea’s pursuit and Finn’s death, even their current captivity-could be traced right back to Balendin Ainhoa. Had Valyn not been so tightly bound, he would have leapt on the leach, would have wrung the life from his flesh. “We were never on the same side,” he said again. “And we never will be.”

He tried to collar his anger, to choke it back. Fury so blind and unreasoning was dangerous in any situation; around Balendin it was deadly. Valyn wasn’t likely to forget their last fight, that desperate night battle high in the Bone Mountains, Balendin knocking aside Annick’s arrows with the tiniest flick of his fingers, Balendin sending stones hurling through the darkness, Balendin chuckling smugly, knowing that as long as Valyn hated him, he would have power. All leaches were strange, unnatural creatures, but there was a world of difference between Talal, who relied on iron for his strength, and Balendin, who fed off the emotions of his foes. Balendin needed the fear and the rage, cultivated them, and while Valyn could, for the most part, master his fear of the leach, the rage was another matter entirely. Clearly the Urghul had drugged Balendin in the same way they had Talal. Had they not, the vicious bastard would already have gutted them all.

Balendin pursed his lips. “You’ve always had a hard time with compromise, Valyn. It’s a shame, particularly now. I could use an ally.” He cocked his head to the side. “And from the look of it, so could you.”

Before Valyn could reply, one of the taabe slammed a spear shaft into the backs of his knees, dropping him into the mud.

“Talk less,” the rider said, dismounting with obvious distaste, then tying Valyn in the same uncomfortable manner as Balendin.

Valyn tried to reply, but the Urghul cuffed him across the cheek.

“Talk less.”

Balendin smirked as Valyn’s Wing was bound. “Well, just think about it, Valyn. I know we’ve had our differences, but…” He shrugged, the movement cut short by his cords, “I think we could get past all that.”