Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (68 page)

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?
”