The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  “A rebel,” Adare said absently. “Two hundred years ago. A peasant.”

  “Hence the skinny. Point is, you’re a princess, a prophet. I wager that gives you a leg up on some rebel peasant when it comes ta the gettin’ into of well-guarded towers.”

  “The problem isn’t the tower,” Adare said, squinting. Most of the time the glass reflected back the sun, the sky, the copper and tile rooftops of Annur. If the glare wasn’t too great, however, and you looked at it just right, you could sometimes catch a glimpse of the inside. From the balcony of the Crane, Adare could just barely make out the break, the point inside the Spear where the man-made floors gave way to that huge column of empty air. “I could go inside right now, climb all the way up to my father’s study the way I did a million times as a child. The problem is what happens after, what happens above.”

  “I take it the whole place gets less welcoming.”

  Adare nodded. “There are guards where the stairs break free of the first thirty floors, then guards again, however many thousand feet above, when you reach the prison level.”

  “Last time I looked,” Nira observed, “guards get outta the way pretty quick when the Emperor comes knocking. Snap your royal fingers, click your holy heels, and you’ll have them all groveling.”

  Adare grimaced. “Not good enough. Triste is the most carefully guarded prisoner in all of Annur. I might be able to get close enough to kill her, but not without everyone in the ’Kent-kissing palace knowing.”

  Nira shrugged. “Let ’em know.”

  “No,” Adare replied, shaking her head. “The council already hates me. They’ll take any chance they can get to break the treaty. If I just walk in and murder the girl, I give it less than a day before they sling me into the cell to take her place.”

  “So … what? Ya want to piss yourself, quit, and go hide in a hole?”

  Instead of responding, Adare studied the fields beyond the city’s bounds, then looked past them, over them, to where distance scrubbed away all detail and she lost both the land and the sky in the morning’s golden haze. How far could she see from this balcony atop the Crane? Fifty miles? A hundred? How far away were the walls of Aergad, the cold stone keep where il Tornja had her child? She could remember the distance if she tried, could pluck it from some map kept tucked tight in her memory. She did not.

  Far. That was the simple, awful fact. Too far. All those horrible, indifferent miles, and her son at the very end of them.

  “What if we don’t kill her?” Adare asked finally, quietly.

  Nira’s eyes narrowed. “Dead,” she growled. “That was the deal. We kill the leach, and in return il Tornja leaves your son alive.”

  Adare nodded, dragging her gaze back to her councillor.

  “I know,” she replied quietly.

  “You know. You know.” Nira spat over the side of the balcony. “Then I’ll go ahead and assume ya also know that if ya don’t kill her, then he will kill him.”

  Adare closed her eyes. She could feel a tide of terror rising inside her, dark, icy, and undeniable. When she thought of Sanlitun, of his tiny chest stilled, of those eager hands suddenly unable to clutch, she felt an almost physical compulsion to comply, to obey, to do exactly what il Tornja demanded. She would bully her way into the dungeon, then pour every one of those poisons down Triste’s throat, she would hold the girl down while she blistered and thrashed, if only it would keep her own son safe.

  Except that it won’t.

  Again and again, that was the thought that brought her up short.

  “If we kill Triste,” she said slowly, meeting Nira’s eyes as she forced the thoughts into words, “what will il Tornja do? Will he surrender my son? Will he give your brother back?”

  Nira’s jaw was set. “He won’t give Oshi back. He needs him too much.”

  “And he needs Sanlitun. As long as he has my child, he’s turned the tables. He’s cut his way free, and slipped a noose around my neck at the same time.”

  “I don’t like it either, but that’s the thing about nooses,” Nira snapped. “Ya end up dead when ya start tugging on them.”

  “We’re going to end up dead either way,” Adare replied quietly. “All these alliances, all these deals—they’re not real. If I’ve learned one thing about il Tornja, it’s that. Whatever battles he fights, whatever wars he wins, he is not on our side. He will use us—you, me, Oshi, Sanlitun—then discard us. Now or later—whenever it’s most convenient.”

  Nira spread her hands, weighing them as though they were scales. “If ya got a choice between dead now or dead later, later’s better. There’s a lot of time between now and later. Maybe enough time for someone to stick a knife in the bastard.”

  “And if they don’t, we’re done. You and me, Oshi and Sanlitun. I gave il Tornja what he wanted once. More than once—all the way from Annur to Aergad. I forgave him my father’s death. I leaned on him to lead my armies. I thought I had him firmly by the reins—and now he’s taken my son.”

  “I know the story, woman. Ya don’t need to read it back to me. I’d like to drive a rusty knife into his eye, but I can’t do that from here, and neither can you. He’s got the noose around us both. We’ll try to break free when we have to, but not over this. This is a stupid place ta make your stand, a dumb fight ta lose that boy a’ yours over.”

  Adare stared at Intarra’s Spear, trying to see past the sun-bright gleam. Somewhere inside that gleaming tower, well above the low fringe of clouds blown in off the sea, was the dungeon, and somewhere in that dungeon was Kaden’s leach, this girl Triste, for whose life il Tornja had threatened Sanlitun.

  Adare shook her head. “Is it?”

  “Is what?”

  “Is this—killing Triste—a stupid fight?”

  Nira waved her hand in irritation. “She’s dangerous, sure. I’ll give ya that. But there’s lots a’ dangerous sons a’ bitches in this world, and I’ll go ahead and guarantee she ain’t the worst of them. Take my brother—Oshi’d rip this little leach’s head off her shoulders without botherin’ to look down. She doesn’t matter—not when ya look at the whole board. We kill her. Your kid stays alive. You stay alive. We fight later, when it’s important.”

  “What if this is important?” Adare asked.

  What am I missing? she wondered, imagining il Tornja sitting across from her, his immaculate boots up on the table. What am I not seeing, you bastard?

  Nira narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “People call me a prophet of Intarra. Since this treaty, I am the acknowledged Emperor of Annur.”

  “Ya want me ta start kissing your asshole now, or wait ’til ya finish shining it up?”

  “It’s not me I’m talking about…”

  “Oh?”

  “… it’s the role. The roles. They are utterly unique. Il Tornja worked hard to position himself at my side because of these titles. It’s valuable to him to have the support of an emperor, to have my stamp on his every action. It gives him freedom, power.”

  “He has plenty a’ power without you, girl,” Nira said, but for the first time she was nodding.

  “Of course he does, but there’s a reason he made peace with me in the first place. He knows that if I die or disappear, he won’t be the kenarang anymore. Instead of being the highest-ranking Annurian general, he’ll be just another warlord, and that will make things harder for him.”

  “What things?”

  “His war against Long Fist, for starters,” Adare replied. “Everything about that effort, from the troops to the supply lines, is predicated on Annurian might. Without me—”

  “Without you he’ll just prop another fool up on the throne.”

  “Maybe,” Adare conceded. “But it won’t be a Malkeenian. It won’t be someone with the eyes. To prosecute this war, he needs Annur unified, and part of what has always unified Annur is the Malkeenian line.”

  Nira frowned. “I won’t say you’re wrong, but you’re pissin’ straight into the wind if ya think il Tornja
needs ya so much that he won’t give ya up.”

  “That’s exactly my point!” Adare exclaimed. “He’s already giving me up. Asking me to go after Triste, to kill her—it is giving me up!”

  “Only if ya get caught.”

  “Only?” Adare demanded. “He’s forcing me to break into the most highly guarded prison in the world.”

  “Us.”

  “Great. A princess-turned-Emperor and an insane leach.”

  Nira frowned. “Half insane.”

  “Regardless. Our odds are terrible.” Adare shook her head. “I thought he wanted me dead, at first. That this was his way of seeing me finished off. But that doesn’t make sense. He could have killed me a thousand times over when I was still in Aergad without anyone the wiser. Why send me hundreds of miles away to let someone else do the job?”

  “Fine. He really wants Triste cut up like beef. Which we knew already.”

  “It’s not that he wants her killed,” Adare said, shaking her head, watching the pieces fall into place once more. “It’s how badly. He’s willing to sacrifice an emperor, an emperor he has effectively enslaved by stealing away her son, and for what? For the chance that together we might be able to kill a garden-variety leach? Does that seem like a smart trade?”

  The old woman’s scowl didn’t go anywhere, but she was still nodding slowly. “Ya think Kaden’s little leach is stronger’n she’s let on.”

  Adare grimaced. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. I’m not sure why il Tornja’s so eager to have her killed, but the fact that he is seems important. It makes me think that before we poison her or blow her up we might want to actually talk to her.”

  “Sounds true enough,” Nira said grudgingly, glaring at Intarra’s Spear as though a long list of il Tornja’s goals were locked up inside along with Triste. “My old mind must be addled worse than I thought, not ta’ve seen it first.” When she shifted her eyes to Adare, however, they did not look addled. “Y’understand what this means, right?”

  “No,” Adare said. “Not fully.”

  “I don’t mean the girl herself; I mean breaking her out, disobeying that Csestriim bastard.”

  “He’s all the way in the north, on the frontier. With a little luck he won’t even know that we didn’t kill her.”

  Nira snorted. “Just when you were creepin’ toward the border a’ smart, ya had to fuck it up by jumpin’ back into a whole bucket a’ stupid.”

  “He can’t know everything,” Adare protested, the words belied by the cold, heavy brick growing in her stomach. Il Tornja had been a full march ahead of her at every point. Even when she managed to surprise him, she failed. She had brought him Oshi and Nira, had thought for months that they were her weapons, and then, when he decided the time was right, the bastard had taken one away, made it his own, as easily as a legionary might take a belt knife from a child.

  A part of her ached to submit, to obey. If she did what il Tornja said, he would let her son live.

  Maybe, replied a voice from deep inside.

  “Ya know the facts,” Nira said, “but ya don’t feel ’em. Il Tornja’s not human, girl. Your son is no more than a stone to him. So’s Oshi. So are you and me. If we fit into his strategy, he leaves us be. If not…” She made a motion with the back of her hand, as though sweeping clean a cluttered ko board. “And it means nothing.” She shook her head. “I’m not against ya in this. I’m a crazy old bitch with nothing to lose. I want to fight him. But you…” She spread her hands. “You’re bold, but by Ananshael’s blackened asshole, ya can be dumb, girl. I want ta make sure ya understand.”

  To Adare’s shock, there were tears in the old woman’s eyes, small and bright in the sunlight, hard as tiny shards of glass, surprising as diamonds.

  “You gave me your child ta protect,” Nira said quietly. “And I let the bastard take him away.”

  “No,” Adare said, laying a hand on her councillor’s arm. “You didn’t let him. You fought, and you failed, but you didn’t let him.” She realized she was trembling, and hated herself for it. Her father had never trembled, she felt sure of that, even when he sent his sons away.

  “I know that opposing him is dangerous. Sweet Intarra’s light, Nira, you think I don’t know that? I’m even prepared to believe that it’s hopeless, but I’ll tell you something else I know: if we give him what he wants, we lose. Maybe not right away, but soon enough, and if I’m going to lose anyway, if I’m going to lose my son, I’m going to do it fighting back. If there’s even a chance that this Triste girl can hurt that bastard, I’m going to take it, and maybe he’ll kill me, maybe he’ll kill my son, but I won’t give him anything else. Anything else he gets from me, he’s going to have to fucking take it.”

  Nira grimaced and glanced down at her shoulder. Adare realized that her own hand was twisted into a claw around the old woman’s flesh, nails digging in through the cloth, knuckles purpling with the strain.

  “That hurts,” Nira said.

  Adare didn’t let go. “Will you help me?”

  The tears were wet on the old woman’s face.

  “If ya have to ask,” she said, her voice little more than a dried husk, “ya’re even dumber than I thought. And I already thought ya were dumb.”

  * * *

  The newcomer’s laugh preceded her out onto the balcony, a light trill of girlish delight.

  “Look at that sky! Oh, Your Radiance, it is altogether too blue! I refuse to believe that is the same sky I see from my own meager windows. Oh, and the ocean!”

  Nira scowled. For half the morning, she had argued against adding another member to their nascent conspiracy. The old woman had tallied up and reviewed the risks from a dozen different angles, while Adare kept returning to the same simple fact: she and Nira couldn’t break Triste out alone.

  We need help, she had insisted over and over. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s clear that we need help.

  It seemed less clear suddenly, now that the help had arrived.

  “Welcome,” Adare said, filing away her misgivings, turning to face their new companion as she glided out through the open doors. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  “The honor is all mine, Your Radiance. An invitation to the topmost chambers of the Crane! How could I resist? I see now, though, that I should never have come. All at a glance, you’ve ruined me. I thought I was content before, snug in my humble house, but now I simply must have a tower.”

  The woman was all silk, and awe, and breathless gestures. Adare ignored it, as she ignored the talk of humble homes and meager windows. If half of what I’ve heard is true, she thought, you could have a dozen towers like the Crane, and fill each one with golden suns.

  “Nira,” Adare said, spreading her hands. “Please meet Kegellen, one of the three council members forming the delegation from Annur. Kegellen, Nira is my Mizran Councillor, recently arrived from the north.”

  “Mizran Councillor,” Kegellen purred, bowing her head along with a graceful curtsy. “It is an honor.”

  Nira looked anything but honored. “You’re the thief,” she said bluntly.

  The other woman straightened. Despite her massive bulk, she moved like a dancer, all grace and smoothness. She slipped a delicate paper fan from somewhere inside the sleeve of her dress, flipped it open, and fanned gently at her face.

  “Oh, I’m sure I don’t deserve the definite article. While I may be a thief, I could never claim to be the only one.”

  The words were mild, but Adare watched the woman’s eyes. Adare herself had grown up around high ministers and visiting princes—shrewd, sharp, predatory men—and she had long experience reading gazes. Though Kegellen continued to smile, to fan herself absentmindedly, her green eyes were bright and still as she considered the older woman. She didn’t look overawed or frightened. She looked … curious.

  “I never thought,” Kegellen said, shifting the subject, “that these old bones would live to see the day when a woman would sit on the Unhewn Th
rone.” Her smile lit like sudden sunlight on Adare. “I couldn’t say this in the council chamber without upsetting all those old men, but well played, Your Radiance. Well played.”

  “Maybe,” Adare said. “And maybe not.” She studied the large woman before her. “I think we can dispense with the charade. You don’t know me. Don’t trust me. I don’t trust you.…”

  “But ya called her here anyway,” Nira said, shaking her head.

  “Because,” Adare said smoothly, “I believe we might come to trust one another. I hope we can forge a common cause. But only if we are frank with one another.”

  “Ooh,” Kegellen replied, fluttering her fan. “By all means, let us be frank. I find frank talk so invigorating.”

  “How’s this for frank?” Nira began, leveling her cane at the akaza, indifferent to the fact that the other woman was a full head higher and easily three times her weight. “You’re a criminal. Ya shit all over Annurian law. You’ve made a life out of thieving and murder, intimidation and extortion, breaking free the slaves of others, then making them your own.”

  Kegellen listened to this tirade with pursed lips and an air of mild curiosity. When Nira paused for breath, she raised a stout finger. “Also, arson,” she interjected cheerfully. “And I dabbled in whoring when I was younger, but found it tiring.” She cocked her head to the side, as though a troubling thought had just occurred to her. “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Adare said, shaking her head before Nira could object. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just perfect. It’s why I asked you here, in fact.”

  “Your councillor seems markedly less enthused.”

  “Oh, I’m enthused, all right,” Nira replied. “This face ya’re lookin’ at? This is my enthusiastic face.”

  “Nira…,” Adare began.

  The old woman raised a hand. “Hold on. Ya’ve got all day ta scheme when I’m done, but there’s somethin’ this woman needs to know.”

  “Oh, I’m always interested,” Kegellen said, “in learning new things. Please forgive me though, if I am slow. This fat old mind of mine is not what it once was.”