The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  The sniper just shook her head.

  “They’re calling themselves Kettral, anyway,” Qora went on. “No better than us, really. Just Jakob Rallen’s thugs.”

  “Rallen?” Gwenna asked, confusion getting the better of her.

  Qora nodded grimly. “He’s in charge now.”

  It made less than no sense. Jakob Rallen had been Master of Cadets for better than ten years, but no one had taken him much more seriously than the chair he sat in.

  “In charge of what?” Gwenna asked.

  “The Eyrie. He still calls it that, but really it’s just his own personal racket now—raising yellowbloom over on Qarsh, using the birds to get it to market overseas, selling it for a massive profit, using the money to buy whatever he needs to cement his position here. He calls it the Eyrie, but it’s just a yellowbloom operation.”

  Jak nodded. “Rallen styles himself a commander of the Eyrie, but he’s just the one in charge of running the drug.”

  Gwenna spat into the water. “That useless bastard couldn’t run a bonfire if the wood was already piled and someone else lit the match.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s burned plenty,” Qora replied. “As you saw last night. And not just buildings. He’s tied people to poles, doused them with oil, and lit them ablaze. He’s a vicious son of a bitch, and he’s in charge.”

  “And you’re the resistance,” Talal concluded.

  Qora hesitated, then nodded warily.

  Gwenna glanced over at Jak. His broad shoulders were slumped, but he was watching her and seemed a good sight more cooperative than Qora.

  “Where are the rest of you?” Gwenna asked.

  He opened his mouth, but Qora cut him off before he could respond.

  “Not a chance,” she said, shaking her head.

  “They saved us, Qora,” Jak observed quietly. The man was obviously strong—he had the chest and shoulders of a serious swimmer, which was saying something on an archipelago where everyone could swim a mile or two before breakfast—but his voice was soft, deferential. If Gwenna closed her eyes, she could imagine a slender boy talking rather than a man grown. “Our plan went all wrong,” he continued, “and they showed up to save us.”

  “Yeah, but showed up from where?” Qora stabbed an accusatory finger at Gwenna. “They already admitted they’re Kettral.”

  “When we left the Islands,” Gwenna replied grimly, “being Kettral wasn’t something people tried to hide.”

  “Left the Islands to go where?” Qora demanded. “On what bird? On what orders? For all we know, you’re working with Rallen.”

  Gwenna stared. “Would we be hip-deep in a mangrove swamp right now if we were working for Jakob fucking Rallen? If Rallen sent us to capture you, we would have captured you and brought you back to Rallen.”

  “Unless he sent you to spy.”

  Gwenna bit down on her retort. The woman was paranoid, but then, months living out of cellars and caves, of glancing up each time a hawk-shaped shadow slid across the sky … that would make a person twitchy.

  “I killed three of those bastards back there,” she said, keeping her voice level. She glanced over at the sniper. “How about you, Annick?”

  “Three.”

  “Talal?”

  “One,” the leach replied. He nodded toward Jak. “I spent most of my time carrying him.”

  “Seven,” Gwenna said, holding up her fingers, hoping the sight of something fleshy, something solid would finally reassure the woman. “If we were working with Rallen, would we kill seven of our friends?”

  Qora watched her, worrying the bloody cuticle of her thumb with one insistent fingernail, lips pressed tightly together. For a moment, Gwenna thought she was about to crack, to talk, then she grimaced and shook her head.

  “What did you say you were doing here?” she demanded.

  “Sightseeing,” Gwenna replied grimly. She glanced over at Jak. He seemed like he wanted to talk, but was taking his cues from Qora. It was tempting to seize them both by the necks, smash their skulls together a dozen times, rinse off the blood, ask the questions again, repeat as necessary. She could get answers that way, no doubt about it. Trouble was—they were likely to be pretty shitty answers.

  Gwenna blew out a long, irritated breath.

  “All right, look. You don’t know who we are—I understand. You want to keep your friends safe—I respect that. Why don’t you tell us about Rallen instead. How’d he get to be in charge? Why do those assholes follow him?”

  Silence from Qora and Jak. The light slap of waves sloshing against the mangrove trunks. The shift and rustle of leaves, perfume of the small white flowers, heavy with their impending death.

  “Look,” Gwenna said, “I’m working on my attitude, and so I’ve been friendly so far.…”

  She let the syllable hang. Then, to her shock, Annick spoke into the stretching silence. “These two are insurgents,” the sniper said without looking over. “If Rallen is the ranking Kettral on the Islands, he is in charge, according to the Code. Any resistance offered by Qora and Jak is treason. They are traitors, as are any allies they might have.”

  Gwenna turned to stare at the sniper. All morning she’d been trying to convince these two idiots that she had nothing to do with Jakob Rallen, that she was on their side, only to have Annick start rattling off passages from the ’Kent-kissing Code?

  “Annick—” she began, but Qora got there first, rounding on the sniper, fury overmatching whatever fear she felt.

  “Rallen came for us, you miserable bitch! We had no idea what had even happened at the Eyrie until he showed up, hawking his ’Shael-spawned second chance!”

  Gwenna choked back her own objections, stilled her face, and settled back against the trunk. She stole a glance at Annick. The sniper was still staring out toward the ocean, an arrow nocked to her undrawn bow. She didn’t say anything more, didn’t even turn. If she knew what she had done, she didn’t show it. Her words, though, that flat endorsement of Jakob Rallen, had rattled free a portion of the truth. The question now was whether to keep rattling, or to wait.

  “Second chance?” Talal asked finally.

  And then the understanding hit Gwenna like a slap upside the head. Suddenly she knew why she recognized Jak. “You’re from Arim,” she said. “Holy Hull, you’re the washouts.” From that point, it was easy to follow the logic’s flight. “That’s why you know how to fight, but you’re shit at it.”

  “We’re doing what we can,” Jak said quietly.

  “Quick Jak,” Talal said slowly, looking at the man with new eyes. “Laith used to talk about you all the time. You’re what, five classes older than us? Laith said you were the best flier on the Islands.”

  Jak grimaced. “You have to pass the Trial if you want to keep flying birds.”

  “And you washed out,” Gwenna concluded. “We were too young to hear the details, but I remember the rumor—Quick Jak didn’t make it. The Kettral’s best flier wasn’t going to be Kettral after all. I always thought you died.”

  The man laughed, a short, mirthless sound, like he’d been punched in the gut. “I’m alive, all right. I even made it through the first week of the Trial. But when we came to the Hole, when I saw those blind white creatures, I just … couldn’t.”

  Like last night, Gwenna thought grimly, when you froze in the alleyway. When the shit got thick and you left your partner to die. This was the resistance, a group of men and women who had fizzled out at some point during their training, who had been kicked down enough times that they finally quit, skulking off to Arim to live out their lives in comfortable captivity. These were her new allies, her only allies.

  “So while the Eyrie was destroying itself,” Talal said quietly, “no one thought to come for you?”

  “Why would they?” Qora demanded bitterly. “A few hundred washouts? The Kettral were focused on killing Kettral. We could see the birds fighting in the sky, could see the boats burning, but we don’t have boats or birds over on Arim. We’re not allo
wed them.”

  Annick nodded without looking over. “Makes sense. The whole island—all Arim—was a no-value target.”

  Qora nodded. “We were almost as irrelevant as the rotting town of rum-soaked thieves over on Hook.”

  “And so when it was all over,” Gwenna concluded, “you were left.”

  She could see the guilt scribbled across both their faces. Quick Jak dropped his eyes, but Qora nodded again.

  “Rallen was left, too,” she said. The defiance had gone out of her voice.

  “And for the same reason,” Gwenna added. “When the shit hit, no one was worried about that useless sack of suet. I’d be more concerned about gull shit on my shirt than Jakob Rallen hoisting himself out of his chair to fight me.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Jak said, shaking his head.

  “Maybe if he falls on you.”

  “Or shatters your face with a kenning,” Qora snapped.

  Gwenna blinked. In all her years as a cadet, she’d never paused to consider Jakob Rallen’s weapons specialty. The idea that he’d ever been anything more than an overweening, power-hungry, third-rate trainer had seemed ludicrous. Even the Kettral made mistakes, and she’d always considered Rallen a perfect example. The thought that he’d once been deadly, that he was a leach …

  She glanced over at Talal. “Did you know this?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “How did you find out?” Gwenna demanded, turning back to Qora.

  Qora, however, wasn’t listening. Her eyes were far away, fixed on some distant, indelible memory. “When it was all done, he came to Arim,” she said. “Claimed the Eyrie had been betrayed, betrayed from the inside. Said there would be a second chance for those of us who still wanted to serve.…”

  When she fell silent, Jak took up the story.

  “We had no idea what he was planning. All we knew was that he was Kettral, high-up Kettral, and here he was, telling us we could try again, could have one more opportunity to redeem ourselves. Everyone flinches, he said. This is a chance to make it right.” He blew out an unsteady breath. “He told me I could fly again. None of us knew what he really wanted.”

  “And what,” Talal asked quietly, “does he really want?”

  “Power,” Qora spat. “His own little kingdom way out here in the middle of the ocean. At first it was all just drilling and training, new uniforms and new blades, burying the fallen and swearing oaths. We thought we were Kettral, thought we were fighting for the empire, thought we were finally doing what we’d trained all those years to do.” She broke off, her mouth twisting into something like a sick, broken smile. “We were such fools. Such fucking fools. Took months before we realized we were just the thugs of some petty warlord who was setting up his fiefdom, the whole thing propped up on his yellowbloom crop.”

  Gwenna shook her head. “And when you did finally realize it, none of you thought to just slide a knife into his gullet?”

  “We tried,” Qora said, the two syllables grinding against each other.

  “Evidently you didn’t try very hard. That shit-licker can barely hoist himself out of a chair. He walks with a ’Kent-kissing cane. You could kill him with a brick and not break a sweat.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jak said. “By that point he had the Black Guard.”

  Gwenna shook her head. “The Black Guard?”

  “Others like us. From Arim. For the first few months Rallen was watching us, testing us, figuring out who was really loyal to the empire, and who just wanted to get in on some killing. By the time we realized what was happening, he had a whole crew, five Wings loyal just to him. They had the birds. They controlled the armory.”

  “And you didn’t fight them?”

  Qora stared at her. “You ever try to fight a kettral from the ground? Standing on your own two feet?”

  It was a sobering thought. Gwenna had spent her life around the birds, learning to fly them, to ride them, to trust them, and yet she’d never really grown accustomed to those huge dark eyes, the indifferent stare. Laith had claimed the creatures were never domesticated, just tamed, and even tame seemed like a stretch when you watched one rend a cow or a sheep to ribbons. Kettral-trained fighters were the best in the world, but a large part of what made them so deadly was the birds themselves. Fighting against a trained Wing in flight … it was a half step from madness.

  “So,” Gwenna said, trying to turn the conversation back to the current situation, “Rallen seized control. He has half of the wash—of the inhabitants of Arim fighting for him, while the rest of you are holed up somewhere.”

  “Those of us who are left,” Qora replied. “Rallen put together his Black Guard, then demanded an oath of obedience.”

  “Kettral swear to obey and serve the empire,” Annick observed.

  “Not anymore,” Qora spat. “Rallen’s oath is to him, personally, as Supreme Commander of the Eyrie.”

  Gwenna shook her head. “What horseshit.”

  “Of course it’s horseshit! That’s why some of us refused. We just didn’t realize he expected us to refuse, that he was ready for it. The oath wasn’t just an oath, it was a test—a way to sort us, to winnow out anyone who might oppose him. The slaughter started almost as soon as he tallied up our names.” She covered her eyes with a hand. “Only a few of us escaped.”

  Gwenna nodded slowly. It was hardly a subtle trap, but no less effective for that.

  “Did any of you try to get free of the Islands altogether?” Talal asked.

  Qora spread her hands. “How? We were never permitted ships on Arim. And if we managed to steal one, what then? Rallen has the birds. He has the munitions. The Black Guard could sink a ship from the air without ever coming close.”

  Just like the Widow’s Wish. It had taken just a few hundred heartbeats from the first assault until the vessel slid beneath the waves.

  “So you’re fighting him.”

  “Trying. Failing, mostly. It’s just about all we can do to stay hidden.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve managed it this long. There aren’t that many islands, and they aren’t that big.”

  Qora hesitated, then glanced over at Jak.

  “Just tell them,” the flier said after a long pause. He was staring down at his hands, strong hands by the look of them, but empty, fingers opening and closing as though hoping for a weapon, as though baffled at the lack of anything to grasp. “We’re already losing. Maybe they can help.”

  “And if they’re with Rallen?” Qora asked, voice tight.

  “Then we’ll get this whole ’Kent-kissing thing over with that much quicker.”

  Qora turned back to Gwenna, jaw clenched as though she’d nailed it shut. It took her a long time to speak, and when she did, her voice was rough and grudging as rust.

  “We’re not on the Islands. We’re under them.”

  16

  Nira had always looked old.

  Ran il Tornja and his tiny cabal of Csestriim had made her immortal, or close enough. They’d found a way, in creating the Atmani, to keep human leaches alive for a very long time. Alive, however, was not the same as young.

  When Adare first met the woman, she’d figured her age at eighty or ninety. Nira had an octogenarian’s gray hair and lined face. Her brown skin was ashen. The decades seemed to weigh heavily on her, bending her spine, stooping her shoulders. Despite all that, however, the old woman had always been stronger than she looked—nimble, quick with her cane, capable of walking all day without flagging—so strong that Adare had started to think of her, despite the evidence, as young.

  Now, she looked half dead.

  Fire had burned away half her hair, seared her left cheek and jaw, licked sickening red weals down her neck. A thick bandage wrapped her left hand; Adare could see blood and yellow pus soaking through the cloth. One of her top front teeth was missing, two more were chipped nearly in half, and her nose was broken, then awkwardly reset. She looked as though someone had beaten her with a cast-iron skillet, then thrown
her in the fire to die. The injuries were grim, frightening, but it wasn’t the injuries that terrified Adare so much as the fact that the woman was there at all.

  The word had come while Adare was holding court from atop the Unhewn Throne. She’d been there all morning, enduring a series of audiences by turns interminable and idiotic—busywork thrown up by the council to keep her from actually accomplishing anything—when a slave crept in, cringing and bowing all the way to the throne, carrying in her hand an urgent note from the guard captain at the palace’s Great Gate: A messenger from the north. An old woman, badly injured. She claims to be your Mizran Councillor.

  They were only letters—tiny and precise, dark ink on a roll of bone-white parchment—but they might as well have been barbs, every one of them lodged in Adare’s chest as she read, lodged in her throat, tugging, then tearing. Nira was there, was wounded, and the guardsman’s note said nothing about an infant. Nothing about Sanlitun.

  Adare wanted to leap from the throne, to charge out through the huge doors, to find the woman who was supposed to be watching her son and wring the answers from her. She was the Emperor, however; there were forms to be observed. There was the whole ridiculous staircase—a one-ton piece of furniture, all dovetailed, polished teak set on silver wheels—to roll out from the shadows so that she could descend with imperial dignity. There were traditional phrases to intone, prayers to offer, then the endless fucking genuflection of the assembled ministers. Adare managed to keep her head up throughout it all, her eyes forward, her hands still at her sides. She managed to play her part, to speak the words that were hers to speak, while the same three questions carved through all other thought:

  Why is Nira here?

  What has gone wrong?

  Where is my son?

  When the great gongs finally shuddered the air and she finally walked from the Hall of a Thousand Trees, she could only hope that she looked like an emperor. She felt like a ghost.

  The Sons of Flame escorted her to a small suite of rooms set into the red walls themselves just north of the Great Gate. It was a simple but elegant space, used for the entertainment of unexpected visitors, men and women of indeterminate rank or station, messengers or foreign ministers meriting a private space while more suitable arrangements could be determined. Nira sat just inside the door, slumped over a bloodwood table, ignoring both the pitcher of wine and the ewer of water glistening wetly on the polished wood.