The Last Mortal Bond (18 page)

Gwenna shifted her eyes back to the men on the dock. The one in front, a tall, wide son of a bitch with a shaved head and skin almost as pale as hers, was raising a hand. He smiled smugly, as though he were a popular atrep preparing to address a gathering of his most fervent supporters.

If he expects to make a speech,
Gwenna thought,
he's going to be disappointed
.

Between the fire and the mob she could barely make out voices a few feet away. When the Kettral opened his mouth, however, the words emerged hard-edged and clear, as though he were speaking directly into her ear.

Which meant that one of them was a leach. Gwenna hadn't expected a milk run when Kaden asked her to go back to the Islands. It had been obvious, even from Annur, that there would be blood on a lot of blades before the whole thing was over. This, however, was looking worse and worse. She gritted her teeth.

“Your town is a shithole,” the man began, smiling all the time as though offering the most fulsome praise. “It is a shithole, but we didn't want to burn it down.”

The mob surged forward at that, men and women bellowing their rage and shame. They'd almost reached the dock when one of the soldiers raised a starshatter above his head. The fuse was already burning—a hot, bright point of light against the darkness beyond. The crowd trembled, hesitated, then recoiled, as though the whole mass were a single creature, one that had learned through hard discipline to avoid that horrible, brilliant light.

The speaker smiled even more widely, white teeth bright in the fire.

“So, as a gesture of good faith…” He extended one hand, palm up, slowly and dramatically toward the western portion of the town. “… we have only burned half of it. At least for now.”

There were shouted protests. Accusations. Screamed curses.

“No one here did
nothing
ta you!”

“My husband's dead. He's dead! He's
dead
!”

“If you didn't want to burn the town, then why did you burn it, you bastards?”

The speaker put a cupped hand behind his ear at this last question.

“Why?” He cocked his head, as though to hear better. “Did someone ask
why
?” He waited a moment, through a few more curses and questions, then nodded vigorously. “Ah, I think I understand the difficulty. Elsewhere in the world, this would not be a problem. Elsewhere people have a notion of law, crime, and consequence. Here on Hook, however, you have been … deprived of such notions.”

He leaned back on his heels, tucked his thumbs into his leather belt, and smiled even more widely. He wasn't much to look at—a wide, heavy face, lips that twisted up cruelly whenever he wasn't talking—but the son of a bitch had the voice of a trained orator—rich, and strong, and supple. He had the voice, and obviously he liked to use it.

“It's not your fault, of course,” he went on. “No people can be expected to circumscribe their own … baser impulses without the outside imposition of law, of order. Formerly, the Eyrie let you all run amok because it suited their purposes to have you disordered, fragmented. A grievous lapse,” he said, shaking his head. “A lamentable lapse. Fortunately, we are here to introduce you to these notions. This,” he went on, leveling a steady finger at the flames, “is
justice
.”

For a few moments, the mob just stared, first at the man in Kettral blacks, then at the flames consuming their miserable homes. To Gwenna's ear it was all a lot of horseshit, long on talk and short on explanation. On the other hand, no one was trying to kill the bastard anymore, so he had to be doing something right. In fact, when Gwenna turned to scrutinize the faces around her, she found them filled with fear and resentment, but no confusion. Protest they might, but they understood why the men in black were burning their homes. She shifted her attention back to the dock.

“When you harbor dissidents,” the leader said, allowing himself a flourish of rhetorical anger, “
this
is what happens. When you take rebels into your miserable cellars and hovels,
we will burn them down
.” He spat onto the dock. The gesture looked fake, somehow, like a performance he'd rehearsed back in the barracks. “You should be grateful. The shacks we burned weren't fit for the rats you shared them with. Try to do better when you rebuild. And when those creeping vermin come to you again begging for help and hiding, remember that I'll pay a gold Annurian sun for every head. On the other hand, the next time a field of our yellowbloom is burned, I'll be back to torch a dozen more houses.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”

The mob started to growl once more, but another voice cut through the rumbling discontent.

“You want a head, you bastard?”

Gwenna spun to find a woman standing on a flight of low stone steps almost directly behind her. She was tall, taller than Gwenna herself, long limbed and dark skinned, hair shaved down to the scalp. She was fine-featured, almost aristocratic in her face and bearing, but though she spoke with chin raised and her dark eyes flashing, Gwenna could smell the fear on her, a bone-deep fear held just barely in check. At first glance, in the night and fickle firelight, she appeared unarmed. As the mob stared, however, she pulled a blade from over her right shoulder. A short weapon, smoke steel and carried in the Kettral style. Despite the blade, however, the woman wasn't dressed like the men on the docks.

Instead of blacks, she wore a sleeveless tunic and dark breeches, practical enough in the hot island weather, but a little too loose for good fighting attire. She knew how to hold the sword, which was more than you could say for most of the idiots swaggering around Hook, and had chosen her position well—high ground, back to a building, double escape routes—except for an open right flank, where a long alley offered a perfect angle of attack. It took less than a heartbeat to see it, but seeing was the easy part. What did it
mean
? The woman defying the Kettral on the dock was almost Kettral herself, but imperfect, like someone who'd been spying on the Eyrie for years without taking part in any of the actual training.

“If you want a head,” she shouted again, voice fraying on the sharp edge of her growing panic, “then why don't you come and take mine? I'm not hiding in a cellar, you murdering bastards. I'm right
here
. You want my head? Come and take it.”

She had the attention of the men on the dock—that was pretty fucking obvious. Her sudden appearance had scraped the condescending smile off their leader's face, and two of the soldiers behind him had half raised their bows. It was a pointless gesture; the woman could step back into the open doorway the moment they put an arrow in the air. The men on the dock seemed to understand this, and neither bothered trying to get off a shot.

People shifted, moving clear of the coming violence, opening a straight path from the Kettral to the lone woman on the stairs, an empty avenue, as though for some emperor's procession. The frightened woman held her ground. Which meant she was either very stupid, or had an end beyond simple taunting in mind.

“I hope you're pleased, Qora,” said the Kettral leader, drawling the long first syllable of her name. “People died here because of you.” The tone was casual, almost lazy, but Gwenna saw the man shift. She caught a whiff, below all the smoke and sweat, of the sudden eagerness pouring off him.

Qora shook her head grimly. “I don't remember setting any fires.”

“You should have realized when you chose to use civilians as shields that shields get battered. They get broken.”

Qora's face tightened. “No one's fooled, Henk. They see who's doing the breaking, and for what. People know a tyrant when they see one.”

“And do they also know a coward who hides behind children?”

She spread her hands. “I'm not hiding now. If you want me, here I am.”

So—a trap
.
Obviously.

Gwenna glanced over the square again, evaluating the angles and approaches. The woman—Qora—was trying to draw the Kettral south, off their dock.
Into what?
There were a few good spots to plant charges, but charges wouldn't discriminate between attackers and civilians. Not necessarily a problem, but this woman seemed keen on the distinction.

A sniper then
.

Qora knew that the men on the dock would have someone covering them, maybe several someones. She was clearly hoping that her appearance on the steps would lure those someones out, that the hidden Kettral with the bows—wherever they were—would get into position to take a shot at her. There was one obvious choice. Gwenna looked back down that street to the east, the open flank on Qora's right. If there were Kettral hidden in the alleys, that's where they'd move to take their shot. Which meant that if
Qora
was setting a trap, she'd have someone waiting down that very alley, someone ready to hamstring the sniper right …
there
.

Qora's companion was tucked back into a shadowy doorway, but his blade was drawn. A smoke steel blade. As traps went, it was clumsy, obvious—Gwenna had run through the whole thing in a few heartbeats—but you had to admire the woman on the steps for playing bait, facing down five Kettral and a bird in the hope of flushing one or two of her foes into the alley. You had to admire her, and you had to do it fast, because she was about to get all kinds of killed.

Two bowmen—the Kettral snipers Gwenna had known would be there—stepped into the long alley forty paces back. Gwenna waited for the man with the sword, Qora's hidden companion, to spring the trap. He didn't. Instead of leaping from the shadows, he froze in place. The snipers, advancing down the alley with their bows half drawn, didn't notice him, and as they approached, stalking forward, eager for their prey, the lone man melted back into the shadows, disappeared.

“'Shael's shit on a stick,” Gwenna muttered, turning to signal to Annick.

Before she'd dropped her hand, Annick's arrows were in the air. A moment later, the snipers in the alley collapsed. Of Qora's cowardly companion, there was no sign. Gwenna scanned the crowd slowly, loosening her focus, ignoring the individual faces, searching for unexpected movement in the mass of people. Where there were two snipers, there could well be another.

It only took a few heartbeats to find what she was looking for. A dozen paces back, emerging from a side street—two men moving against the drift of the larger current, pressing
toward
the woman on the steps when everyone else was trying to get clear. A third was coming in from yet another angle, all of them moving slowly, but with more purpose than the situation seemed to require. None carried bows, but you didn't need a bow to kill a woman, not if you got close enough—and they were definitely closing.

“Well, fuck,” Gwenna said, more loudly than she'd intended.

She eased her belt knife in its sheath, eyes still roving over the scene.

The Kettral on the dock didn't move, but they had more than three accomplices seeded through the crowd, she realized. Four, five, six … Gwenna had figured on one extra Wing scattered about the square, but there were at least two, both of them clearly intended to cover the main act out on the dock, both now converging on the woman on the steps. Qora didn't seem to notice. Instead, she was stealing glances up the side street toward where her companion had disappeared, slipping away while their shitty plan tore apart at the seams.

Briefly, Gwenna considered letting the woman die. It hardly made sense to start putting knives in people until she'd sorted out who, exactly, was who, who needed killing and who just needed a swift kick in the ass. On the other hand, the basic contours were clear enough—the men with the birds were burning buildings to try to get at the others, the rebels. Qora was a rebel. Hull only knew how many more rebels there were, or where they were hiding; both pieces of information seemed useful.

“Well, fuck,” Gwenna said again, sliding her knife between the ribs of the first Kettral as he passed.

The man's eyes widened, but pain stole his breath. He reached briefly, weakly, for the blade, fingers dumb and fumbling. Gwenna wrapped an arm around his waist, as though he were a friend with too much to drink—she'd learned that trick from a Skullsworn assassin a whole continent away in what seemed like another life—then lowered him gently to the stones. She hadn't given Annick another signal, or Talal, but how much of a 'Kent-kissing signal did you need? It ought to be pretty clear that it was time to start killing people.

When she straightened up, she saw they'd followed her play. One of the other Kettral was folding slowly over, grasping at an arrow in his chest. Then a second stumbled, coughing up blood. More were coming, though, and Annick didn't have angles on all of them.

“Qora,” Gwenna called, trying to get the attention of the woman on the steps without alerting the entire square.
“Qora.”

Qora looked down. Her eyes were wide and baffled, ablaze with the still-burning fire to the west, hot with her own fear and rage. Gwenna motioned her toward the nearest street.

“Time to go.”

The woman's only move was to lower her sword at Gwenna, an unfortunate gesture that drew every eye in the crowd. Another Kettral, just a few feet away and closing, turned to stare at Gwenna. When he saw the bloody knife in her hand, he drew a sword from beneath his cloak.

Gwenna shook her head. “I'm on
your
side, you asshole,” she hissed to the man.

He hesitated, glanced back up at Qora, who was staring down at both of them. Gwenna stepped in and cut his throat. People were starting to shout, to scream. Behind her, on the docks, the men with the bird were moving. Things were ugly and about to get a whole lot uglier.