The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

“And if I will not?”

  “Then Triste stays where she is. The goddess remains trapped. Until someone kills her.”

  Long Fist moved with all the speed of a striking adder. Since Kaden entered the tent, the man had remained still, seated. The violence he had plied earlier was a violence of the mind. Now, however, as he uncoiled, Kaden had time to think a single thought—impossible, it was not possible that any human should move so fast—and then Long Fist was through the fire and on top of him, those long, elegant fingers with the painted nails closing around his throat, slamming him back against the damp dirt.

  “You would trade Ciena as though she were some Urghul horse?” he demanded, the last word a hiss.

  Kaden tried to respond, to shake his head, but that hand might have been cast from iron.

  “You would barter her welfare like one of your copper coins?” The grip tightened until Kaden felt he was breathing through a thin reed, the hot, sweet air too little for his heaving lungs.

  “I will tell you three truths,” the shaman went on, “and I will shape them to your words so you can comprehend. First, the fact I wear this skin means nothing. That Ciena has robed herself in the flesh of some rebellious slattern means nothing. We are not what you are. We are so much more that your mind would break beneath the sight.”

  Darkness hemmed Kaden’s vision. The light in the tent might have been failing, and fast, only he could still feel the fire, hot against his right flank. He harnessed his heart, slowed it, parceled out his breathless blood, focused only on the moment.

  “Next, Ciena will not die with this child, but you will. All of you. Your minds were built for our fingers. Without them, you will wither or go mad. Her death or mine, either one, will mark the end of your race.”

  He leaned so close Kaden could feel his breathing, smell the sweet root tea thick on the breath. Those blue eyes, sky-deep and ocean-cold, were suddenly the whole world, a universe awhirl with brutal blue, a blue so hot it burned, it seared. How had people not known the truth? Kaden’s air-starved brain offered up that single thought over and over and over. How had anyone ever believed those eyes were human?

  “Do you understand?” Long Fist demanded.

  The hand relaxed fractionally, enough for Kaden to gasp a half breath, to nod. And just as quickly as he had struck, the shaman released his grip.

  Kaden’s body wanted to scramble backward, to claw through the walls of the tent, to get out and away. He forced himself to stillness. When he thought he could talk without gagging, he locked eyes with the Urghul.

  “And the third truth you hoped to tell me?”

  Long Fist watched him, his eyes human once more, or almost human.

  “There is no calling it back,” he said finally.

  Kaden shook his head, his mind cloudy with the attack. “Calling back what?”

  “This war,” the shaman replied, nodding to the doors of the tent. “For decades, I have kindled fires beyond your border and inside it. Now they are beyond me.”

  “You are a god.”

  “There are older gods than I. Stronger gods. I took this flesh to set a single finger on the scales, to tip the delicate balance from order to chaos. That chaos stalks your empire now. It is beyond the grasp of any single man, so let us have no more talk of calling it back.”

  As Kaden dragged the jungle air into his lungs, breath after desperate breath, he tried to think. The leverage he’d so trusted had proven treacherous, illusory. Trying to move Meshkent with the truth about Triste was like trying to pry a great stone from the dirt with a branch of rotten pine. Maybe there was another way, something else he could do or say to regain purchase in the conversation. If so, he had no idea what it was, no idea how to twist the shaman to his will. No idea if it would matter if he could. He had spent enough time kindling fires, watching them burn, to recognize an immutable truth in the god’s words. Maybe Kiel would have found a way, or il Tornja, but for all his skill with the vaniate, Kaden was not Kiel or il Tornja.

  “All right,” he said. The words were part plea, part confession.

  “How will you make all right?”

  “I’ll get you into the Dawn Palace. I can probably even get you to Triste.…” He trailed off, despair, sudden as a hot summer gust, blowing over him, through him. Since Meshkent had wrenched him from the vaniate his mind was as disordered as that of the rankest acolyte. “But you won’t be able to get her out. Even you. You have no idea what the dungeon of the Dawn Palace is like.”

  Long Fist just smiled that predatory, feline smile. “And you have no idea of the power slumbering inside me.”

  23

  When Adare had asked Kegellen to acquire a thief, she’d had a few vague ideas in mind. A good thief, she’d always believed, would be inconspicuous, forgettable, bland as a stone wall, a creature of quick fingers and old clothes. Not a tiny, naked bald man with a hand-wide tattoo of the moon inked across his smooth brown face.

  Adare glanced at Kegellen, then over the woman’s shoulder, half waiting for some other, more suitable figure to slip in through the door. Over Nira’s strenuous objections, she had agreed to meet in a modest mansion up on Graves, one of the dozens of properties belonging to the Queen of the Streets; if the whole plan went straight to ’Shael, after all, Adare didn’t want anyone in the Dawn Palace remembering a parade of unsavory characters visiting her own chambers.

  Kegellen’s house, like the woman herself, was all elegance: quiet courtyards ringed with marble colonnades, delicate fountains, fine rugs from Sia and Mo’ir, tropical flowers that must have required an army of gardeners to maintain. The woman’s taste in art leaned toward the erotic—sculptures of lithe young men twisting around their own muscled forms, Liran tapestries woven into scenes of pleasure and delight—but even the boldest pieces managed to be tasteful, restrained. It hardly looked like a den of thieves, but then, the naked man before her didn’t look like a thief.

  Adare raised a brow. “This is him?”

  “Indeed, Your Radiance! Indeed.” Kegellen made an elegant little flourish with her outstretched hand. “May I present to you Vasta Dhati, First Priest of the Sea of Knives.”

  The man didn’t smile. He seemed to be looking at Adare and not looking at her, as though he were studying a portion of her forehead without realizing it was attached to a face.

  “I wasn’t aware,” Adare said carefully, “that there was a priesthood associated with the Sea of Knives. Last I heard, the whole place was just a haven for pirates.”

  Dhati didn’t blink, didn’t shift his gaze, but he made a quick hiss, so loud and unexpected Adare took half a step back.

  Kegellen spread her hands apologetically. “Pirates. It is a regrettable word that our landbound world uses to describe his congregation.”

  Adare blinked. “I asked for a thief who was good with climbing and ropes and you brought me a pirate priest of the Manjari?”

  At the word pirate, Dhati hissed again. Then, without preamble, leapt into the air, folded his skinny legs beneath him mid-flight, and landed atop the table, ankles crossed onto the inside of his thighs in a way that made them look exceedingly likely to break. Adare stared.

  “I think you will find Vasta Dhati’s skills quite satisfactory,” Kegellen said. “He has collaborated with me for quite some time.”

  “How long?”

  Kegellen turned to Dhati, who, after his brief display of acrobatics, seemed content to sit atop the table, eyes fixed before him.

  “Seven years, I think it is now.”

  “What about his flock?” Adare asked. “Back in the Sea of Knives?”

  Kegellen spread her hands. “Regrettably, he is in exile.”

  “Exile? Exiled by whom?”

  The small priest seemed disinclined to do any talking on his own behalf, and so Adare had addressed the question to Kegellen. Before the woman could respond, however, Dhati raised a single finger, pointed it straight at the ceiling, and began speaking in a rapid patter so heavily accented Adare could
barely understand.

  “Apostates and blasphemers. Those of unsteady breath. A plague of the unsanctified. Clutchers of anchors and coastlines, traitors to the swell of the holy wave. They”—Dhati’s finger trembled here, and his eyes rose to the ceiling as though seeking confirmation from the huge chandelier—“will pay the full account on the day when I return.”

  He made some complicated sign in the air with that single finger, as though to seal the words, then fell so silent he might never have spoken. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Adare stared. Despite his naked chest, it was hard to tell if the priest was breathing at all.

  All right, she thought bleakly. So he’s insane.

  “Can you climb?” Adare asked hesitantly. “Climb ropes?”

  Dhati hissed again. It seemed to be his preferred mode of expression.

  “He is the finest climber in Eridroa,” Kegellen replied for him. “Before he came to me, he lived an entire life in the rigging of his ship.”

  “Great,” Adare replied. “But there’s no rigging inside Intarra’s Spear.”

  “Dhati believes a man should be his own rope.”

  Adare blinked, looked from Kegellen to the self-proclaimed priest, then back again.

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  As if in answer, Dhati tipped his head abruptly back, his spine hinging perfectly at the neck until he was staring straight up at the ceiling. As Adare stared, he extended both hands before him, interlaced his fingers into a double fist, paused with his arms at their rigid full extent, and then, with a sound like a strangled, phlegmy roar, slammed the heels of his hands into his gut. The blow doubled him over. He remained in that position, motionless save for a wavelike rippling of his ribs.

  “Is this…,” Adare began, looking over at Kegellen.

  The woman smiled and raised a hand, pointing back at the priest with a brightly painted fingernail.

  The small man bared his teeth as he straightened. They were crooked and yellow-brown, but there between them, caught between his right incisors, was a flash of bright red. Adare took it for blood at first, the product of that violent blow to the stomach, but after a moment Dhati reached between his teeth and took between his thumb and forefinger what turned out to be the end of a silken band. Adare watched, fascinated and repulsed, as the priest drew the silk out, hand over hand, length after length. It piled on the table before him, sodden and limp, coil after coil, until he finally pulled the last length free. When it was all out, he drew in a noisy breath, shuddered once, then shut his jaw.

  “How long is that?” Adare asked.

  “Ten times his height,” Kegellen replied, beaming. “Not a trick to enjoy over the dinner table, I’m afraid, but from time to time it has come in terribly useful.”

  Adare looked from the red silk to the man, struggling to weigh the possibilities and the risks. Finally, she took a step to stand directly in his line of vision. He didn’t twitch, didn’t look at her, but she went ahead anyway.

  “Did Kegellen explain what we need you to do? Did she explain the risks involved?”

  Finally, the priest turned a dark, pitying eye on her. “The risk is what it is. I have been in prisons before, yes. And I have left them.”

  “This isn’t just a prison,” Adare said. “It is the imperial dungeon inside Intarra’s Spear. To get you inside, you will be taken by the guards, accused of treason.”

  He smiled. “Treason? I am the First Priest of the Sea of Knives. It is a post far above any petty emperor.”

  “Right,” Adare said, unsure if this was part of the coming show, or the man’s actual belief. She suspected it was the latter. “So they’ll have no trouble believing the treason part. You will be hung inside a cell.”

  “All the world beyond the Sea of Knives is a cell.”

  “Yes. Well. This one will be smaller. And steel.”

  “Steel is as smoke to me.”

  “Still…”

  “The only question,” Dhati went on, cutting straight through her words, “is one of price. Did the Priestess of the Streets explain to you my price?”

  Adare cocked an eyebrow at the other woman. “The Priestess of the Streets?”

  Kegellen spread her hands. “An honorific of his own invention. I make no claim to the divine, Your Radiance, I can assure you.”

  “Did she explain the price?” Dhati asked once more.

  “No,” Adare replied, shaking her head. “As a matter of fact, she didn’t.”

  “When it is done,” the priest proclaimed, “I will require a fleet.”

  Kegellen made a face, a sort of stretching of the lips that seemed to say, Sorry! You know how priests can be.

  “A fleet,” Adare said, wondering if the man was joking. “A fleet of ships?”

  No, she thought, studying his face. Not joking.

  “A dozen should suffice.”

  Adare shook her head. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

  “The First Priest of the Sea of Knives understands the value of a vessel better than any grubby hugger of land.”

  “The council will notice if I start handing out ships. They will object. They will ask questions. I can give you gold.”

  Dhati hissed again, even more violently this time. Adare could feel the tiny drops of spittle strike her face.

  She glanced over at Kegellen.

  The woman shrugged. “He doesn’t like gold. It sinks.”

  “What need,” the man demanded, “does the First Priest of the Sea of Knives have for heavy metal clawed out of the earth?”

  “Well,” Adare said slowly, drawing out the syllable as she made an effort to keep her temper in check, “you can use gold to buy ships.”

  “I require ships.”

  “Yes, but with the gold you can—” She stopped herself. Dhati was staring at her forehead again. Glaring at it, really. “One,” she said instead. “You can have one ship.”

  Dhati made a face, as though he had suddenly smelled something foul. “One is not a dozen.”

  “And you are not the only thief in Annur,” Adare replied smoothly.

  “There is only one First Priest of the Sea of Knives.”

  “While I’m certain that’s true, I’m willing to make do.”

  The small priest sucked in a tremendous breath. Adare stared as his chest expanded and expanded, to the point where it seemed likely to explode. He held it a moment, and then, with frightening energy, began to hyperventilate. His eyes bulged. His lips turned a strange shade of purple. Adare took a half step forward, wondering if the man were having a seizure, but Kegellen put a hand on her arm.

  “He is thinking,” the woman murmured.

  “He looks like he’s dying.”

  “It is the way that he thinks.”

  And then, as quickly as he had begun, he stopped, sat stock-still on the table.

  “Three ships.”

  Adare ran the numbers in her mind, considered the current deployment of the various fleets, reapportioned a few dozen vessels, then nodded slowly.

  “Three ships.”

  “It is a meager fleet,” Dhati said, “but am I not the First Priest of the Sea of Knives? It will suffice.”

  When the small man finally left, striding through the open door without so much as a glance back or a farewell, Adare turned to Kegellen, shaking her head.

  “You know some interesting people.”

  The Unkillable Bitch smiled merrily. “I enjoy the company of unique souls.”

  Adare nodded, then glanced toward the door where Dhati had disappeared. “And were you able to find the other one; the … woman we discussed?”

  Kegellen nodded. “I suspect, regrettably, that you will find her less interesting than Dhati.”

  “I certainly hope so. She’s supposed to be dead.”

  “Hmm. Dead. Yes. Well, I hope that dying will be adequate. After all, we have two days to wait, and I understood you wanted the body to be fresh.”

  * * *

  It w
as obvious at a glance that the young woman wasn’t well. Though she leaned only lightly on the arm of the servant leading her into the room, her shoulders slumped, her hand trembled, and there was no missing the exhaustion in her short, uncertain stride.

  So young, Adare thought, staring at the girl, and already dying.

  That was the point, of course, but suddenly she felt sick, nauseated almost to the point of vomiting. She had ordered soldiers to their deaths, of course, sent them into battle dozens of times over, all along the northern front, signing their doom with a sweep of her pen. Every time, every battle, it felt awful. This was worse.

  Adare had pored over reports of Triste’s atrocities in the Jasmine Court, scouring them for physical details. It would have been easier just to go see the woman in her cell, but if things went wrong—and there was a lot about the plan that could go very, very wrong—Adare didn’t want anyone remembering that she had visited the leach only days before. Which meant research in the imperial archives, a full night of reading the carefully compiled accounts from the day her brother returned to the Dawn Palace.

  The most precise of them described “a young woman, staggeringly gorgeous despite her macabre appearance and the obvious perversion of her nature, a creature of the palest skin, the darkest hair, eyes of the deepest violet…”

  The young woman Kegellen had found was pretty rather than beautiful, and her dark brown hair would have to be dyed. Otherwise, she seemed to fit the descriptions of Triste closely enough, although it was impossible to look at her, standing meekly just inside the door to the room, eyes downcast, hands clenched around the faded fabric of her dress, and imagine a vicious, murderous leach.

  “Please sit down,” Adare said. “Is there anything that you’d like? Anything that would make you more comfortable? Water? Wine?”

  A slave hovered by the door, waiting to race to Kegellen’s ample cellars, but the girl seemed not to have heard the question. She was staring at Adare in open amazement.

  “You’re here,” she breathed. “Those eyes … You’re her. The Emperor. Intarra’s prophet.”

  “Mailly did not believe,” Kegellen interjected, stepping forward gracefully, “that the Emperor of all Annur would have need of her.”