The Last Mortal Bond (21 page)

She wanted to hit him, to knock some expression into those expressionless eyes.

“Do you think there has been a day since I learned the truth,” she demanded with a growl, “when I didn't dream of opening his throat?”

Kaden met her glare. “Then why haven't you?”

“Because sometimes it is necessary to suppress our immediate instincts, Kaden. Sometimes it is necessary to make sacrifices, to accept, if only for a time, the most loathsome situations.” She shook her head, suddenly weary. “It would be nice, wouldn't it, to always speak the first words that came to mind. It would be a wonderful luxury to associate only with the honest and the upright. It would be so, so satisfying never to compromise, never to make decisions that led you to hate yourself.”

She stared out to the east, to where the evening wind was whipping up the waves. Behind her, the council chamber would still be smoldering, but sooner or later, that clean east wind, salt-sharp and cool, would scour away the last of the smoke.

“Following your own heart might be a nice way to live,” she said quietly, “but it's a disastrous way to rule.”

Kaden blinked. “Fair enough,” he said after a pause, then cocked his head to the side. “How did you learn the truth about il Tornja?”

“He made mistakes,” Adare replied bluntly.

Kaden frowned. Those burning eyes went distant, as though he were studying something beyond the horizon. “That seems unlikely,” he replied finally. “It is much more likely that whatever you know about him, he wants you to know.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Because I'm just some stupid slut? Because I couldn't possibly have any insight or agency of my own?”

“Because he is Csestriim, Adare. He is smarter than any of us, and he has had thousands of years to plan. He was their greatest general.…”

“You don't need to lecture me on his brilliance,” she replied grimly. “You forget that I was on the tower in Andt-Kyl. I saw him command the battle. I know what he can do. I kept him
alive
because of that brilliance, because I know just how badly we need it.”

Kaden raised his brows. “And you still think that you outsmarted him?”

“I think that even Csestriim can run into bad luck.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there are other factors in play here. Factors unknown to you.”

“Tell me.”

She barked a laugh. “Just like that, eh?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because I don't fucking
trust
you, Kaden. That's why not. The first thing you did when you got back to Annur was to destroy it. You're trying to stop il Tornja, or so you claim, but Ran il Tornja is the only one actually
defending
Annur.”

“He is not defending Annur,” Kaden said quietly. “He's trying to kill Long Fist.”

“At the moment, it amounts to much the same thing.”

“It would, if Long Fist were just an Urghul chieftain.”

And so, after a long diversion, they were back to Long Fist. Adare had never even seen the man, and yet he seemed to be everywhere, the answer to every riddle, the fire beneath every column of smoke, the bloody battle at the end of every endless march. All paths led to him. Every scream could be traced back to his bright knives. Underneath every name she uttered—Kaden, il Tornja, Valyn, Balendin—underneath or above, she seemed to hear the name of the Urghul chieftain echoing.

“And you think he is what?”

Kaden took a deep breath, held it a moment, then blew it out slowly. “Long Fist is Meshkent.”

Adare stared. The small hairs on her arm, on the back of her neck, stood up at once. The evening was cool, not cold, but she suppressed a shiver. Il Tornja had been saying the same thing for months, but she had never believed him, not really. “What makes you say that?”

He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “You knew.”

“I knew it was a possibility.”

“Il Tornja told you.”

She nodded carefully.

“And did he tell you
why
he was so eager to see Long Fist destroyed?”

“For the same reason that I am,” she said. “For the same reason that you should be. To protect Annur.”

“Why would he want to protect Annur? He fought to destroy humanity, Adare. He nearly succeeded. Why would he care about one of our empires?”

“Because it is not
our
empire,” she replied. The words were bitter, but she said them anyway. “It is his. He built it. He takes care of it.”

“In the same way that a soldier cares for his sword.”

“You keep saying that,” she said, “but you never get around to explaining how he's planning to use that sword.”

“To kill Meshkent.”

“Why?”

Kaden hesitated, then looked away.

Adare blew out an angry breath. “If you expect me to believe you, Kaden, if you expect me to help you, then you have to give me
something
. Why are you so concerned about the health of Long Fist or Meshkent or whoever the fuck it happens to be? The bastard is putting our people to the sword and the fire, he's leaping around through these 'Shael-spawned gates—
your
gates, these
kenta
—lighting fires at every corner of Annur. I'm not sure il Tornja's reasons even matter, as long as he stops him.”

For the first time, Kaden's eyes widened. Something she'd said, finally, had made it past that shield he used for a face.

“Long Fist is using the
kenta
?” he asked, a new note in his voice, one she couldn't place. “How do you know that?”

“I
don't
know it. It sounds impossible to me, but il Tornja insists it's true.”

Kaden was shaking his head, as though resisting the claim.

“I know you thought you and your monks were special,” she said, “but if il Tornja's right, Long Fist is a
god
. Evidently gods can pass through the gates.”

“It's not the—”

Kaden clamped his mouth shut.

“What?” Adare pressed.

It had seemed, for just a moment, that he was about to talk to her, to
really
talk, without the evasions and omissions that had marred the rest of their conversation. It had seemed as though they were about to push past some unseen barrier, some awful, invisible wall that stood between them even in the limpid evening air. It had seemed, for just a heartbeat, that he was about to speak, not as one politician to another, but as a brother to a sister, as someone who understood the weight and texture of her loss, the awful, echoing emptiness, someone who shared it. Then the moment passed.

“It's surprising,” he said brusquely. “Although it makes sense. The violence on the borders is too perfect, too well coordinated to be random.”

Adare stared at him, willing him to say more, but he did not say more.

“Nothing about it makes sense,” she snapped finally. “But that doesn't mean it can't be the truth.”

Kaden nodded slowly.

“So,” Adare said, breathing heavily, “are you
still
going to insist we should be worrying about il Tornja and not Long Fist?”

“It's starting to seem,” Kaden replied, “that we need to worry about everyone.”

“Well, I've done more than worry,” Adare said. “I've got il Tornja collared. Under control.”

“How?”

“I'll tell you when I trust you.”

And suddenly, it didn't seem so impossible, trust. Kaden had known more than she realized. Her lies hadn't needed to be as wide as she had expected, nor so deep. The gap between them was just that, a gap, not a chasm. Intarra knew she could use an ally, one who wasn't immortal or half insane.

“Kaden,” she said quietly. “We need to be honest with each other.”

He held her eyes and nodded slowly. “I agree.”

“You're my brother. We can figure this out together.”

Again he nodded, but there was nothing behind the nod, no true agreement.

“I wish Valyn were here,” he said after a pause.

It didn't seem like Kaden, like this
new
Kaden, to wish for anything. He was a monk now, and his monk's training appeared to have put him beyond wishing, in the way that fish were beyond breathing. On the other hand, the Shin couldn't have changed him entirely. He had confided in her. It was a start.

“Me, too,” she said.

It was the truth. Scholars and philosophers were forever lauding truth, holding it up as a sort of divine perfection available to man. The truth in those old texts was always shining, glowing, golden. As though they didn't know, not any of them, that some truths were jagged as a rusty blade, horrible, serrated, irremovable, lodged forever in the insubstantial substance of the soul.

 

12

The deadfall was empty.

For the fifth day running, something had triggered the snare, something strong enough to shift the bait stick, but quick enough not to be there when the huge rock came crashing down. Valyn stifled a curse as he knelt in the soft, loamy soil, sifting through the brown needles and dry hemlock cones, searching for some sign of a print. The deadfall wasn't perfect. When he was too cautious in setting it, he'd find the bait stick licked clean while the snare remained untriggered. If he wasn't cautious enough, the whole thing would end up lying in a jumble on the forest floor with no sign that an animal had come anywhere near. Sometimes the stone came down wrong, pinning a hare or a squirrel without killing it. Sometimes the larger creatures—beaver, porcupines—could haul themselves free. It wasn't all that strange to find the snare empty. What was strange was finding it triggered day after day, finding animal tracks leading in and blood on the stone, but no carcass. No tracks leading away.

“'Shael take it,” he cursed, resetting the trap with nimble fingers, trying once again to figure out what had gone wrong, how he could prevent it from going wrong again.

It had to be a bird. A red eagle would be plenty strong enough to haul a bloody carcass out of the trap. A red eagle or even a balsam hawk. Birds would take the catch without leaving tracks.

“But birds can't lift the stone,” he muttered to himself, hauling with both hands on the flat slab of granite, grunting as he muscled it into position. Valyn could barely lift it himself—which seemed to rule out a bird after all. No—something else was stealing his catch, some creature strong enough to heave aside the huge stone, but smart enough to move over the soft ground without leaving a track. Valyn tried to puzzle out what it might be, tried and failed.

“Sure is a clever bastard,” he muttered. “Clever, clever, clever.”

As though speaking that word aloud, repeating it, could drown out the other word, the more honest one prowling the back of his mind: not
clever,
but
frightening.

A cold wind gusted through the boughs. Hemlocks creaked, trunks packed so close together that even the dead trees still stood, forced to remain upright, supported by the living as they went to rot. Even at midmorning, sun filtered weakly through the branches, every lance of light casting a shifting shadow.

Normally Valyn didn't mind the gloom. He knew these woods better than he knew his own home, knew the softest, driest moss where he could catch a quick nap, the best trout holes in the meandering streams, the damp hollows where the mosquitoes swarmed most thickly, and the few sweet spots where the ferns and the breeze kept them at bay. The forest was his; he loved it. Today, though, as he straightened from the newly rigged snare, something felt off, wrong.

He paused just long enough to smear the bait stick with suet, then, crouching low, slipped through a gap in the rough trunks, wanting suddenly to be away from the dark thicket, to get to somewhere he could see more than a dozen paces, somewhere he could actually
run
.

It wasn't far to the Jumping Rock—a low, lichen-crusted granite shelf leaning out over a bend in the river, and when Valyn reached it, he paused, hunkering on the lip to catch his breath. The sun had climbed well above the jagged tops of the eastern trees, high enough to burn off the last of the mist above the meandering current, to warm his skin. A little upstream, a trout rose for a fly; tiny waves radiated out from the disturbance, perfect circles on the green-brown water. Suddenly, Valyn felt foolish. Here he was, a boy of eight, jumping at forest shadows as though he were a baby. He offered up a silent prayer of thanks that his brother wasn't along to witness his cowardice.

“It's a red eagle, sure,” he muttered aloud, changing his mind once more as he pondered the mystery of the snare. Out of the shadows, sitting comfortably on the rock's rim, skinny legs dangling down over the water, it seemed like a reasonable answer. A rabbit had triggered the trap, then twisted itself partway free. The eagle could have seized the struggling creature without ever lifting the rock at all. He squinted, trying to picture the scene, the beak hooked in the blood-soaked fur.
Definitely a red eagle
.

He put the question out of his mind, rooting in his leather sack for a twisted length of dried venison, then sat gnawing it contentedly, looking out over the water. There were still a dozen more snares to check, and one of them, surely, would have a squirrel or a hare, maybe even a fisher cat. And if not, well, he wouldn't mind an afternoon going after one of those trout. There was still half a deer hanging up over the fire pit back in the cabin, and plenty of game in the forest. His mother might come home with another deer, or his father and brother with that bear they'd been tracking. It wasn't as though the whole family was relying on Valyn.

He had just settled back on the warm stone, half reclining as he chewed the dried meat, the morning's agitation all but forgotten, when something made him jerk upright, hand on his belt knife. Skin prickling along his arms, he scanned the forest around him. There had been no noise, no bear's growl or rabbit's dying scream. If anything, the woods seemed more still, somber. Even the birds had gone quiet, their light song chopped off mid-note. Sweat slicked Valyn's palms. He could feel his breath coming fast and ragged. Why were the birds so
quiet
?