The Last Mortal Bond (88 page)

It doesn't matter,
he reminded himself. A liar could rule an empire. A traitor could rule an empire. Either one would be better than a half-trained monk.

“Why did you go back?” Triste asked.

Kaden realized he'd been staring at her without seeing her.

“Go back where?”

“To Annur. To try to take the throne.”

It was a simple question. He had no answer. Looking back, words like
duty
or
tradition
seemed too weak, too dry and abstract to explain the things that he had done. The throne itself had carried no allure. He knew no one in Annur, not even his sister.

He shook his head. It was as though he were a stranger from his own life, incapable of explaining his own decisions, even to himself.

“Look…,” Triste began.

The night's quiet shattered before she could finish. Over the low moan of the wind and the lisp of the river's current, men began shouting, voices etched with anger and surprise. Annurian voices. Il Tornja's soldiers, though Kaden couldn't make out the
kenarang
's orders in the sudden chaos.

Steel smashed against steel, ground over stone. Men were screaming now. Dying, by the sound of it, the crisp urgency of command and response mixed with an animal panic, high keening notes of pain and desperation. As if in response, Meshkent shifted inside Kaden's mind, testing the boundaries of his cage all over again.

Slowed by drug, Triste rose slowly.

“Who—”

The wall exploded.

One moment, lamplight had been playing over the rough red stone. The next, a sheet of flame, bright as the midday sun, blazed across Kaden's eyes. Something punched him in the chest, knocking him back across the chamber and into the stone altar.

A shard of rock,
he thought blearily, trying to keep hold on his own consciousness even as he groped at his chest with a clumsy hand. Surely there would be blood. Surely beneath that massive ache, there would be something broken. Either he had gone blind, or the world was suddenly, absolutely dark. Meshkent seized that moment to claw at his prison, growling, raging, larger than the sky and bent on escape.

Kaden closed his eyes, threw the whole weight of himself against the walls he'd made. The god inside him wanted out, ached to join whatever battle raged outside, but Meshkent misunderstood the weakness of his human vessel. Fighting was hopeless, pointless. Kaden couldn't see, couldn't stand, couldn't even hear beyond the high, bright ringing in his ears. If Meshkent got free, he would fight, and if he fought, he would die.

No,
Kaden whispered.

The god bore down, furious and huge. Kaden gritted his teeth, marshaled what strength he had, and pushed back.

Between the battle beyond the temple walls and the desperate struggle raging in his mind, it took Kaden a long time to realize someone was clawing at him, a small hand, panicked and desperate.
Triste.
He reached out to seize her arm. Smoke and stone dust filled his nose, but the ceiling hadn't fallen. No great corbels had crushed them. Instead, cold night air poured through the hole in the shattered wall. Flame ravaged the streets outside, though what was burning Kaden had no idea. Against that blazing background of orange and red, a dark figure stepped into the breach.

Kaden blinked his eyes furiously, trying to make out more than the shape against the blinding flame. Then, abruptly as it had come, the fire was gone, leaving him staring into blackness. He raised his fists—a pointless gesture, but he could think of no other.

“Triste,”
he called out.

There was no time to find out what was happening outside, no opportunity to sort the battle into sets of tactics or clearly labeled sides. The only thing he knew was that chaos had come, and with it, an opportunity.

“Triste,”
he hissed again.

The girl's answer was a scream.

Kaden spun toward the sound, trying to blink back the afterimage—filigrees of red and yellow flame—stitched across his eyes. He could make out no more than two shapes in the darkness: Triste, and someone at her back, someone taller and evidently stronger, pinning the girl's arms to her sides. Triste lashed out with a foot, started to scream again, then fell silent. Another fire roared to life beyond the temple's shattered wall, farther away this time, but close enough that Kaden could see the flame reflecting off a blade at Triste's neck.

“Kaden,” said a new voice. “Triste. It's lovely to see you both looking so well.”

Whatever madness was unfolding in the streets beyond, the person holding the knife didn't sound worried, didn't sound rushed. It was a woman's voice, low and throaty. She sounded … amused. Inside Kaden's mind, Meshkent went suddenly, utterly still. Wariness poured off the god, wariness that could be explained only by the woman with the knife, a woman Kaden remembered all too well, though the last time he had seen her had been a year and two continents distant. They had been lost in another ancient city then, in another range of peaks, fighting for their lives against a different group of Annurian soldiers.…

“I'm not sure what it says about the two of you,” the woman went on conversationally, “that every time I see you, you're being chased by men with swords. Some people might take that amiss, I suppose, but I'm inclined to think it means you're special.”

“Pyrre,” Kaden said quietly.

So Rassambur had noticed their arrival in the Ancaz after all.

“What is going on out there?” he asked.

“Oh, you know,” she replied breezily. “Death. Dying. A great offering to the god. And what a spot for it! Just a couple dozen miles from Rassambur, and we had no idea this place was even
here
. Very atmospheric.”

As though to underscore the point, the air beyond the broken wall burst into another sheet of flame, illuminating for half a heartbeat both Triste and the Skullsworn assassin, who continued to hold the knife against her neck. Fear and confusion played over Triste's face, but Pyrre looked cheerful, despite blood dripping down from a gash at her hairline. It was almost a loving pose, that arm wrapped around the girl's chest, the two heads close to touching. Minus the knife, it was the sort of thing you might find between a mother and daughter, although the two looked nothing alike. Pyrre was obviously older, her face lined by long years in the sun, her hair as much gray as black. Older, and harder, leaner beneath her leathers. She wore the blood smearing her face as though it were makeup.

“We have to go,” Kaden said, glancing toward the broken wall once more. Boots clattered somewhere in the streets beyond, steel continued to scream against steel, but there were no soldiers just outside, at least not for the moment. Pyrre had said nothing about a rescue, but she was a priestess of death. If she had come to kill them, she would have killed them already.

“Indeed,” the assassin replied, cocking her head to the side. “The tide has shifted. My brothers and sisters came to make an offering to Ananshael, but it sounds as though they have become the sacrifice.” She didn't sound bothered by the development.

He listened to the fighting. “How do you know?”

“Less screaming,” she said. “Ananshael's adherents die quietly.” She shrugged. “They have a leach—a strong one. We didn't figure on that.”

Triste twisted in the woman's grip. Pyrre let her go.

“Where is the other one?” the assassin asked, glancing around the stone chamber. There was a new note in her voice this time, an eagerness, a hunger. “Long Fist. I've waited a long time to see him again.”

Kaden shook his head. “Escaped.”

Pyrre's eyes narrowed. “We tracked you here.…”

“He leapt into the river just a quarter mile north.”

The Skullsworn clucked her tongue in irritation. “A shame. I was looking forward to opening his throat.”

Inside Kaden's mind, Meshkent coiled and uncoiled, his voice a silent, wordless growl.

“We have to go,” Kaden said again, as much to blot out the god as to drive them into motion.

Pyrre pursed her lips, looked from Kaden to Triste, then back again. “I suppose we do.”

“How?”
Triste demanded, staring out the gap in the wall. The fire had died down, but the shouts and screams seemed to be coming from everywhere.

“I suppose it would be too much to hope,” Pyrre said, “that one or both of you might have spent the past year studying something other than pottery or fellatio?” The assassin raised an eyebrow. “No?” She let out a long sigh. “I guess we'll stick with the same plan as last time, then.”

“What
plan
?” Triste demanded.

“You run as fast as you can,” Pyrre replied brightly, “while I kill people.”

 

47

From the top of the watchtower halfway along Annur's old northern wall, Adare stared west. It was easier than looking north. There was nothing to the north now but burned-out wreckage, charred timbers crumbling under their own weight, backyard gardens buried beneath ash, the streets impassable, blocked by the crumbling hulks of shattered stores and stables, temples and taverns. The distinctions didn't matter now. Whoever had lived, loved, and prayed in those spaces just days earlier was gone. Safely evacuated, hopefully. Maybe just dead, hung in one of the dozens of squares, or crushed beneath the weight of the burned-down buildings and their own stupid stubbornness.

Atop the wall, at least, the situation was different. Terial's old fortification was a hive of activity: soldiers stacking crates of arrows and extra spears, masons laboring to repair cracks and rents, men dangling on ropes before and behind the wall, or standing on hastily erected scaffolding, or bent double in the middle of the walkway itself, slathering old stones with new mortar. Adare glanced up at the sky. According to the master mason in charge of the project, all the effort would come to nothing if the rain arrived before the mortar set, but there was nothing to be done. The Urghul wouldn't wait for the rain.

As Adare studied the ongoing work for her makeshift command post atop the tallest of the towers, Nira came puffing up the stairs, followed by Kegellen and Lehav.

“Near as any of those assholes with the numbers can figure, there's enough grain in the warehouses to last the city two weeks.”

Adare looked up at the clouds, considered the figure.

“'Course, we'll have resupply,” the old woman went on. “More rice than wheat, but food's food to a grumbling belly.”

“Sixty percent of that food came from north of the Neck,” Adare replied finally, “at least for Annur. Given what's in the warehouses and the trickle that'll keep coming up from the south, we can last three weeks.”

“Longer,” Lehav said. “A lot longer. Start the rations now.”

Adare turned to him. “I just burned down the homes and neighborhoods of a hundred thousand Annurian citizens. I've told them to live in warehouses and whorehouses and any other kind of fucking houses with enough space on the floor for a curled-up body. It's astounding the city isn't rioting already.”

“The Queen of the Streets has her thugs out,” Nira said. “They're—”

“Encouraging calm,” Kegellen interjected. Unlike nearly everyone else on the wall, Adare included, she didn't seem to be panting or sweating. The sky-blue silk of her robe fluttered lightly in the hot breeze. She patted her hair with a free hand, as though to check it had not fallen free of the elaborate pins and clips holding it up.

“And by
encouraging calm,
you mean killing people,” Adare said, pressing a hand to her forehead.

Kegellen winced elaborately, as though the words themselves pained her.

Nira just shrugged. “Sometimes ya gotta kill people to save 'em.”

“The grain…,” Lehav began again.

“The grain is fine,” Adare said, shaking her head. “If we all survive long enough to starve, I'll count it a victory. The miserable fact is that this city is on the brink of extinction. We're one eloquent, heartbroken mother away. One firebrand of a soldier who saw his family home torn down with his aged father inside. If one of those bastards starts making speeches in the streets,
good
speeches, we'll have full-blown madness south of the wall, and even Kegellen can't keep putting knives in them all.” She blew out a long breath. “We won't
need
Balendin and the Urghul to kill us. By the time they show up, there'll be nothing left of Annur but mud and blood.”

For once Nira had no response. She was staring down at the burned-out houses, but Adare had a sense that instead of the recent violence, she was seeing the wreckage of her own wars, battles a thousand years dead and more.

“The people need hope,” Lehav said finally.

Adare met his eyes. “So start handing it out with the grain,” she growled. “Greatest city in the world must have a few warehouses just packed to the rafters with hope.”

“A flip response,” the soldier said. “One that ill becomes the prophet of Intarra.”

“Intarra,” Adare said, the word so bitter on her tongue it might have been a curse rather than a prayer. “Where's the goddess when you need her?”

Lehav's jaw tightened. “That you would ask such a question is the reason the people are losing hope.”

“They're losing hope,” Adare spat, “because I'm burning down their fucking homes and the Urghul are coming to finish the job.”

To Adare's surprise, it was Nira rather than Lehav who replied. “He's right,” she said. “Men don't need a goddess when the table's piled high and the bed is warm. They need her when the well runs dry. When the fire's all but burned out.”

“I need her, too,” Adare snarled. She could feel the heat seared into her skin at the Everburning Well, could trace the scar. But what good were heat and scar in defending a city? Where were the bolts of lightning stabbing down out of the sky to scatter their unnumbered foes? Where was the strength to melt rock and level armies? Adare's own glowing eyes were just that … glowing. They could barely illuminate a manuscript in a pitch-dark room, let alone save a whole city from destruction. “I need her, too,” she said again, shaking her head.