The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  “I’ll do it,” Mailly said at last. She was crying again, but the shaking was gone.

  Adare stared.

  “I’m dying anyway,” the girl whispered. “And what good are five thousand suns to my mother and brother if there’s no food to buy? If there are Urghul riding through the streets?”

  Hope bloomed in Adare like a sick-sweet flower. She hated herself for it, but she’d hated herself for a lot of things for a long time now. She could live with a little more hatred. She glanced up at the trapdoor twenty feet above. It was still closed. How long had they been hanging in the basket? She’d told Simit that she needed time, but how long would the man wait? Not all day, certainly. Was there still time to make the switch?

  “Are you certain about this?” she demanded, gripping the girl by the elbow more firmly than she’d intended.

  Mailly flinched, but she nodded, dragging her gaze from Adare’s eyes to the brown bottle in her hands. Kegellen had mixed the ayamaya with strong Breatan spirits. It might dull the poor child’s pain, she had suggested, studying the bottle as she handed it over. Adare didn’t believe that for a moment.

  Mailly stared at the glass as though it were a viper, then grabbed for it, clawing at the cork with shaking hands like a drunk desperate to get at whatever was inside. The glass, slick with her tears, half slipped from her grasp. Adare lurched forward, catching it before it could tumble through the basket railing. When she raised her eyes, Mailly was staring at her.

  It seemed like there should be something to say. Emperors were always making speeches, after all, extended declamations on patriotism and sacrifice. Generals addressed the men before sending them into battle, and the fate that Mailly faced was at least as awful as an Urghul spear to the stomach. Surely there was something to say, something both comforting and ennobling, but Adare found the words would not come. She was gambling away the girl’s life, and for what? The shadow of a shot at Ran il Tornja. There was no nobility in the sacrifice, only desperation.

  Adare studied the bottle in her hands. Then, with a nudge of the thumb, popped free the cork.

  Mailly gave a little gasp, like the sound a girl makes when she steps into the ocean for the first swim of late spring—a small sound, almost the start of a laugh. Adare could imagine her standing knee-deep in the waves, eyes wide with the excitement and the cold, ready to dive in, but waiting, maybe, for her friends. Only Mailly had no friends, not here. There was only Vasta Dhati, perched impatiently on the railing, and Adare herself, the woman who had brought her here, not to brave those bright spring waves, but to die alone, her awful pain utterly unwitnessed.

  “Mailly…,” Adare began, but before she could think what to say next, the girl seized the bottle in both hands and raised it to her lips, drinking desperately, almost greedily, the brown spirit trickling down her bare neck. Adare stared at the girl’s throat as she swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed again, then suddenly convulsed. Mailly grimaced, lips twisted back, eyes squeezed shut. It seemed for a few heartbeats that she would vomit it all up.

  Does it work so fast? Adare wondered. Is the poison so violent?

  But after a heartbeat more, Mailly trembled herself free of the liquor’s grip, fixed her eyes on the bottle’s rim, and began drinking again, more slowly this time, but with a quiet determination, pausing between each sip.

  “How much?” she gasped when she’d had a third of the bottle.

  “No more,” Adare said, reaching out to stop the girl, to take the poison back.

  According to Kegellen, a single swig would do the necessary work, but only if Mailly held the liquor down. For a moment the two just stared at each other, both frozen. Mailly’s eyes were wide, as though she’d just now realized what she’d done, was only now understanding that she could not take it back.

  But she can, Adare thought grimly, some cold part of her own mind, a part she loathed, working through the logistics of the girl’s death. ’Shael only knows what might happen if she gets sick now. She had a vision of Mailly in Triste’s cage, vomiting but not dying, her skin spared the worst of the coming blisters, her eyes unbloodied by the poison’s violence. The next time the guards descended with the adamanth, they would find her, would know that Triste had escaped somehow, and Simit, with those careful eyes of his, would put the pieces together easily.

  “Are you all right?” Adare asked.

  Mailly’s mouth moved, framing the shapes of silent words.

  “Mailly?”

  The girl locked eyes with her. “I’m really going to die.”

  Adare nodded gravely. “You are. But you saved your family. Your mother and little brother and…” She hesitated, uncertain how to phrase the rest. “And maybe more. Maybe, in some strange way, all Annur.”

  “She’s that important?” Mailly asked, staring at Triste’s cell. “The leach?”

  I don’t know, Adare almost said. It was the honest truth. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know why my own general wants her dead. I don’t know what threat she poses or to whom. I have no play in mind, nothing even resembling a plan. All I can do is deny him his demands, and even that might prove pointless.

  “Yes,” she said instead. “She’s that important. And so are you. You’re crucial to this whole rescue.”

  And then, to her shock, Mailly smiled. “Crucial.” She shook her head ruefully, suddenly even younger than her few years. “Will you tell my brother that?” she asked. “That I was crucial?”

  “Of course,” Adare said. “I’ll make sure—”

  Before she could finish, a convulsion doubled Mailly over, violent as a fist to the gut. She groaned, then clamped her teeth shut on the sound.

  “Is this it?” the girl asked, half straightening, face tight, stitched with pain.

  Adare nodded helplessly.

  “So fast,” Mailly marveled.

  “Now,” Dhati said. “We go.”

  The priest reached down, and, with surprising strength, hoisted the girl up onto the railing, held her there as she seized the chain, then tossed the hook from her harness over the silken rope.

  “Go,” he said again, gesturing.

  Mailly stared down, swallowed a sob, and tightened her grip.

  “Let go,” the priest said again.

  “Wait,” Adare said.

  The two looked down at her, the priest impatient and disdainful, Mailly with her tear-streaked, terror-blighted eyes, and Adare realized she had nothing to say. She had brought the girl here to see her dead, to leave her behind, and the time had come for leaving. Dhati watched her a moment longer, then hissed his irritation, shoved Mailly squarely in the chest, and they were both over the edge of the railing, the girl dangling from her makeshift harness, the priest hanging from his hands, his knees locked around her waist as he pulled her out over the abyss.

  Adare started, half stretched a hand toward Mailly, some stupid, human effort to touch her, as though that touch could bring any comfort. They were already away, though, Dhati’s hands moving fast, his wiry arms drawing them toward Triste’s cage.

  Thank you, Adare realized. That was what I should have said. Just thank you.

  She opened her mouth to call to the girl, but they were too far, the risk of raising her voice too great. Mailly’s gaze was fixed on her, her eyes wide, as though she were waiting for something, but Adare forced her own mouth closed, painfully aware of Simit waiting, just a few paces away through the steel ceiling above.

  It’s over, she told herself. The whole thing is long past words, anyway.

  She wanted to turn away, to shut her eyes, but she held Mailly’s terrified gaze until they reached the far cage and Dhati lifted her clear of the silk, guiding her onto the roof of the cell, where he paused, running his strong hands over her skin, driving his fingertips into the wasted flesh in just the right places to make the girl go numb, limp. Then, with a savage tug, he jerked her arm from the socket and lowered her over the side.

  For what felt like forever, Adare stood alone in the
basket, bathed in the afternoon light, strangled by her own emotion. It’s taking too long, a part of her thought, but the part of her that could still feel fear seemed wrung out, too exhausted to respond. There was only a cold, broken feeling, like a shattered knife lodged in her chest, driving deeper each time that her heart beat.

  When the pirate priest finally emerged, dragging a different woman up into the light, Adare barely noticed. It was the leach, Triste, the one they had come for. They were so close to the very end of the whole insane plan. It was going to work. Adare discovered that she didn’t care. All she could think of, as Dhati hauled this other creature back across the silken cord, was Mailly alone in that cell, suspended in the air so many thousands of feet above everyone in the world who loved her, shaking as the poison raked its sharp claws through her flesh.

  “Here,” Dhati said, jolting Adare from her thoughts as he deposited the leach unceremoniously inside the basket. “Remember. Three ships when I escape.”

  Adare stared at the woman before her. Triste and Mailly were roughly the same age, close enough to the same size and build that, after the poison’s ravages, the guards wouldn’t notice the difference. The similarity, however, ended with those basic dimensions.

  Mailly was pretty, if strangely pale. Triste was … perfect. Adare could arrive at no other word. Violence had scribbled scars across her skin. Red weals marred her face and arms. Something that looked like a burn spread across the flesh of her left hand. Her black hair was utterly unkempt, matted to her scalp as though she’d long ago gone mad. None of that mattered.

  She’s too beautiful. That was Adare’s first thought. It seemed wrong, somehow, impossible.

  “You have his eyes,” Triste said. Her voice was quiet, drugged, but bright enough to slice through Adare’s thoughts.

  Adare was used to power. She was the daughter of an emperor, the sister of princes, the one-time consort of a Csestriim, and the protégé of one of the Atmani. As she locked gazes with the young woman, however, as she stared into those hooded violet eyes, something inside her quailed. For half a heartbeat she wanted to bow, to grovel, to leap from the basket if that was what it took to escape that gaze. It went through her like a knife, and then it was gone, leaving her knees weak and her mind reeling.

  “Kaden’s eyes,” Triste said again. “You have them.”

  Adare steadied herself on the railing, straightened her spine, filled her voice with all the iron she could muster. “You will find I’m nothing like Kaden.”

  Triste started to reply, then shook her head as though the effort were too much, as though the whole enterprise of speech was pointless.

  “You’re breaking me out. Why?”

  “I need you,” Adare replied.

  “For what?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Triste shrugged, as though the answer didn’t really matter, as though the whole escape were no more amazing than the arrival of the evening meal. The drugs, Adare realized. She’s drugged almost thoughtless.

  “Put this on,” she said, holding up the hooded robe that Mailly had worn into the tower.

  Triste studied it, then slipped it over her head. The gesture was casual, indifferent, but there was a grace to it that would make most women ache with jealousy.

  “Who was she?” the leach asked, tugging the fabric into place.

  “Someone who agreed to die in your place.”

  “Why?”

  Adare opened her mouth, but found she lacked the language to respond. The truth was too large for words, too necessary and too cruel. What finally came out, when she managed to speak, was the barest brutal shadow of that truth, a shadow that settled down on Adare’s heart like a cold winter sickness.

  “Because I fucking paid her.”

  27

  “I can’t do it,” Quick Jak said quietly, staring at the milk-pale monster flailing on the stone floor of the cavern.

  The creature was fully trussed, and yet even captive, even tied, the slarn was a nightmare to turn the strongest stomach, slick, and twisted, and twisting. Like some sick fuck grafted together the worst parts of a wolf, a snake, and a man-sized salamander, Gwenna reflected. The slarn’s raking claws were long as her thumb, the teeth too many and too jagged for that gaping mouth, but the teeth and claws weren’t the worst of it. The worst part was the eyes, or rather, the blank swath of skin where the eyes should have been.

  Men and women the world over revered Bedisa as a gentle, loving goddess, the tender midwife of all living things. It was worth remembering, however, that in addition to the beasts of the forests and the light-winged birds of the air, Bedisa also made monsters to prowl the cold, dark places of the world, that she who knit the stuff of human souls had also sculpted this horrific vision with its too-white, glistening flesh. It seemed to Gwenna that if the goddess wanted to fill the world with life, she might’ve gone a little heavier on the feathers and lips, a little lighter on the poison and claws, but then, there wasn’t much point in second-guessing the gods. The world was the way it was; some parts of it you could relax and enjoy; some parts you just had to kill.

  The other rebels had gathered in a rough circle around the slarn, staring at it silently, awe and horror scribbled on their faces, amazement in their eyes. They’d fought the slarn before, but in the mad fury of a fight people didn’t always really see a thing. Well, they’re seeing it now, Gwenna thought. Seeing it, and, judging from the horror on their faces, wishing they weren’t. They’d heard about the slarn over on Arim, but hearing about it was useless. Words might manage to capture something of the way the creatures looked, how they moved, but you could never describe to someone how those things made you feel deep in the soft inner part of you.

  “I couldn’t do it then,” Quick Jak continued, taking a half step back from the writhing slarn, holding his hands up in surrender. “And I can’t do it now.”

  “Yes,” Gwenna said grimly, “you can. You will. We didn’t haul that fucking thing out of the guts of this cave just to play touch and tell.”

  It had taken her, and Annick, and Talal hours to find the slarn. When they finally got it out and up into the cavern where the rebels had made their camp, Gwenna was ready to throw the ’Kent-kissing creature on the bonfire and have done with the whole idea of the Trial. The slarn was only a young adolescent, Talal had worked up some sort of kenning to keep its jaws locked for a few breaths, and the beast had still almost taken her arm off when she jumped on top of it.

  Killing the creatures was tricky enough. Capturing the fucking thing had almost finished her. She’d barely managed to keep hold of its back as it thrashed, barely managed to stay clear of the jaws and the claws as the beast smashed her into the walls, tried to scrape her off on the floor, barely managed to wrap an arm around the slarn’s throat, then roll so the writhing creature was on top of her, belly-up, raking the air with furious claws. Another couple heartbeats and it would have broken free, but Annick and Talal didn’t give it a couple heartbeats. While Gwenna cursed and clutched the thing tighter, they managed to truss the long rear legs, then the shorter front ones. By then Talal was sweating like an ox, and his kenning, instead of fading, just snapped. Then, of course, the miserable beast went at Gwenna all over again, ignoring its trussed limbs, twisting and snarling, trying to sink a tooth into her as she rolled free.

  And of course, after all the wrestling, dragging the slarn half a mile upward through the twisting passageways of the Hole had taken a toll on all three of them. One of the claws had hooked Talal, leaving a long gash down his arm; the long, muscular tail knocked Annick a dozen feet off a ledge; and the sheer weight of the thing falling on her over and over had jammed two of Gwenna’s fingers, fingers that blazed with pain as she wrenched them back into proper alignment, then settled into a dull, constant ache. The physical effort, however, did something to distract from the horror of the slarn itself, and it was only as they lugged the writhing creature into the light of the bonfire, only when Gwenna saw the shocked an
d horrified expressions on the faces of the washouts, only when she smelled their fear, hot and rotten, that she felt the full weight of what she meant to do.

  “You want it to bite us?” Qora asked, pulling Gwenna’s attention away from Quick Jak. The woman’s shaved scalp was slick with sweat, dark skin glistening in the firelight. “You want us to let it bite us?”

  “You wanted to be Kettral?” Gwenna asked. She nodded toward the slarn. “This is how you get to be Kettral.”

  Qora was staring, they were all staring, but only a few were looking at the beast pinioned in front of them. Most of them were looking at her, Gwenna realized; they were staring with a mixture of awe and fear, as though some vicious killer had suddenly appeared in their midst, some implacable warrior they were powerless to resist. The whole thing made her sick.

  “What the fuck did you expect from Hull’s Trial?” she demanded. “A short essay on your favorite line from the Tactics?”

  “It’s poison,” Manthe said from beyond the ambit of the circle. She refused to come within twenty paces of the creature, but she’d risen to her feet as though getting ready to flee, had one hand on the pommel of her sword while the other kneaded the filthy hem of her tunic over and over. Her eyes burned, fever-bright behind her tangled hair, and though her voice trembled, it was loud enough for everyone to hear. “You remember Carl over on Arim? Poor old shaking Carl? This is what happened to him. This.”

  Gwenna made herself nod calmly, made herself meet the frightened eyes of the washouts. “Manthe is right, but she’s not telling you the whole story. The bite of a slarn is poison, but there is a way to cure it. There are eggs in this cave, slarn eggs. Those eggs are the antidote. Find one, drink it, and the poison goes away.”

  “Then why do it at all?” Qora demanded. “It’s pointless.”

  “No,” Gwenna replied. “It is not. Something about the poison and the egg, about the combination of the two … it changes a person. It makes you stronger and faster. You can feel things, hear things you’ve never heard before. It’s those advantages that make the Kettral the Kettral—those just as much as the birds and the blades. They’re part of the reason we were able to go down there and drag this one out.”