The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  “So,” the Flea said quietly.

  “So,” Valyn replied, parrying the syllable with his own.

  “Time to talk.”

  “We talked this morning.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  Valyn shook his head. “You already talked to Gwenna months ago. Gwenna and Annick. I’m sure you heard it all from them.”

  “I want to hear it from you.” The Flea didn’t raise his voice, but there was something dangerous in the words, something that made Valyn lean back against the tree, his body trying in vain to put a little more space between them. He didn’t want to go over it all again, to say it aloud, to explore the dismal chronicle of his own failure, but then, sometimes wanting didn’t really come into it. After Finn’s death, he owed the other man an explanation. That much, at least, was clear.

  He blew out a long breath. “We got to Assare just before dusk—”

  “No.”

  Valyn hesitated.

  “Start earlier,” the Flea said. “Start on the Islands. Why did you leave?”

  Valyn shook his head silently, trying to find the words. His life on the Qirins—Ha Lin and Gent, barrel drops and mess hall slop—it all seemed like something from a dream. Worse, when Valyn thought back on himself, on the self he had been before losing his eyes, he barely recognized the man. Valyn the Kettral cadet, the Wing leader—he had died somewhere between the Bone Mountains and Andt-Kyl. What he had become, he had no idea.

  “There was a conspiracy…,” he managed finally.

  It was a twisted, tortuous tale, but it didn’t take long to tell it: how Balendin had killed Ha Lin, had tried to murder Valyn himself; how the Aedolians had come for Kaden; how Valyn’s rage at the kenarang had blinded him to all the rest; how he had sat atop the tower in Andt-Kyl while his friends fought, while they died. He’d lived every detail of the story over and over, waking and in nightmare, but it was another thing to say the words aloud, and when he finished, he was trembling. If he hadn’t been sitting already, his back pressed up against a huge hemlock, he thought he might collapse.

  “It’s no easy thing,” the Flea said finally, “losing a Wingmate.”

  It seemed a strange thing to focus on, after all the rest. After all the talk of Csestriim gates and imperial treachery, Valyn hadn’t expected the man to return to the simple fact of a soldier fighting, dying. That was what soldiers did, after all. It was the least of the tale. And yet it was Laith’s death, Valyn realized with a cold shock, that remained lodged inside him like a poisoned arrowhead the medics had been unable to pull free. He’d had moments of success—killing Yurl, making sure Kaden got free—but who were Yurl and Kaden? Strangers. Valyn had slaughtered one and saved the other, but both actions seemed small now, trivial. Laith, on the other hand, had been a friend and a Wingmate, more a brother than Valyn’s real brother. And Valyn had left him to die, fighting alone on a bridge.

  He wanted to say all that, to force his own guilt and regret into words. After recounting the whole sick story, however, he found he had no more words to offer. Instead he just shook his head. “We’re all going to die one day.”

  “Still,” the Flea replied, his voice low and cold as the night wind. “The day matters.”

  Valyn let out a long, shuddering breath. “About Blackfeather Finn,” he said finally. “I didn’t…”

  He trailed off. The Flea hadn’t moved, hadn’t even twitched, but the man smelled suddenly of grief, bright red grief twisted with rage, the scent so powerful that for a moment Valyn thought he might choke on it. The man’s voice, however, when he finally spoke, was flat, level.

  “Tell me about your eyes.”

  “No,” Valyn replied. “I have to say this. About Finn…”

  He wanted to talk about the fight in Assare, wanted to explain the whole context, how he couldn’t have known the Flea’s allegiance, how even after he’d decided to trust the other Wing, Pyrre had come out of the darkness. He wanted to explain that her killing wasn’t his killing, that he hadn’t ordered it, hadn’t wanted it.…

  “We’re done talking about Finn,” the Flea said, cutting into his thoughts. He hadn’t raised his voice, but for just a moment Valyn could see. The other Wing leader stood a pace away. He’d moved his hand to his belt knife, but his eyes weren’t on Valyn. He was looking up between the boughs, as though there were something to read in the night’s black bowl. Then, as quickly as it had come, the vision was gone. Valyn suppressed a shudder. Vision meant danger, always and inevitably—mortal danger—as though there were more violence pent up in the Flea’s few quiet words than in any number of bared blades. Wind blew down cold out of the north, raising the hairs on Valyn’s neck. There had been no threats, no rage, but suddenly he felt certain that death had blown past him, just barely ruffling his hair.

  Words were useless to stitch together some wounds, and so Valyn left behind the subject of Blackfeather Finn’s death. “I can see,” he said after a long pause. “Not most of the time. Only when there’s a fight, when I’m about to die.” He omitted the nightly violence of his sex with Huutsuu. “Like another sense, a new sense that isn’t quite vision, shades of black on black.…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  For a long time the Flea said nothing. Valyn could smell the grief fading, dissipating on the night wind, replaced by the old steely focus. “Something that happened in the Hole?” he asked.

  Valyn nodded slowly. “I think so. Maybe. At first it was the same … abilities as the rest of my Wing, only better, more. Talal thought it was because I ate from the black egg.”

  “And then?”

  “Then il Tornja cut out my eyes.”

  The Flea was silent for a long time. At last he grunted. “Makes sense, I guess.”

  Valyn stared into the endless void of his burned-out vision.

  “How,” he demanded quietly, “does it make sense?”

  “Slarn move just fine in the darkness. So do bats. Talal’s probably right—you got it from the egg.”

  “If that was true, I would have had the sight from the moment I came out of the Hole.”

  “Not necessarily. You were busted up then, but you weren’t broken.”

  “What’s being broken have to do with it?”

  For a while, the Flea didn’t respond. Far off, somewhere to the east, an owl’s screech shredded the silence. Valyn could just make out the sounds of struggle, of some small forest creature writhing in the claws of the bird, screaming as it died. It was done in moments, and then the night clamped down again, cold and unbroken.

  “Sometimes you need to break a thing,” the Flea said finally, “in order to see what’s inside it.”

  29

  “I don’t want it,” Triste said, shaking her head as Adare slid the small glass of adamanth across the polished table.

  “The world is filled with things we don’t want,” Adare replied. “Drink.”

  The leach glanced warily at the glass, then raised her violet eyes to study Adare.

  “Things we don’t want?” She shook her head. “Are you and I on the same side?”

  “That depends on your side.”

  Triste didn’t respond. She held Adare’s gaze for a few moments, then looked away, examining the room in which they sat. Kegellen’s wine cellar was small by imperial standards, barely a dozen paces square, but the modest space was more opulently appointed than most formal entrance halls. Cedar racks along the walls cradled thousands of bottles—bloody reds and sparkling whites, rose-pale vintages from Sellas and icewine from north of the Romsdals, rich and lustrous as gold. At a glance, the collection looked to be worth a lifetime’s wages for most of the city’s citizens, but Triste wasn’t looking at the wine. The leach’s gaze had drifted past the racks to snag on a statue in the corner.

  The marble piece was one of a set of four, each gazing inward from its solitary plinth, two gods, two goddesses, clean-lined, pre-Annurian, slender-waisted, and naked. Intarra was there, of course, stern-browed and rega
l, her crown a towering sunburst carved in stone, and Hull, his eyes gouged into deep, shadowy sockets. The rendering of Meshkent made Adare’s skin crawl; the Lord of Pain was gaunt, almost emaciated, all extra flesh chiseled away as though he were the victim of famine or some wasting disease. The statue’s face, however, was ecstatic, the knife-sharp smile sickeningly wide.

  But Triste wasn’t looking at Hull or Meshkent. Her eyes were fixed on the depiction of Ciena. The Goddess of Pleasure was a popular subject in both painting and sculpture. Adare had seen more versions than she cared to remember; most imagined the goddess as little more than a wide-hipped, full-breasted slattern, her tongue poised coquettishly between her parted teeth, or her eyes closed, mouth half open in a silent moan. This Ciena was different, frank-eyed and direct, hard and unyielding beneath her marmoreal curves.

  “What is this place?” Triste asked. Her eyes lingered on the statue a moment longer. Then she turned slowly, almost grudgingly back to Adare. “Where are we?”

  “A private home.”

  “Why did you take me outside the palace?”

  “Because everyone inside the palace wants to kill you.”

  If Triste was disturbed by the revelation, it didn’t show. That scarred, perfect face didn’t show much of anything. The girl—and she was barely more than a girl—reminded Adare of the stones players she used to watch growing up, silent figures bent over tables tucked away into mossy corners of the palace gardens. There was no obvious similarity. Those players were old, Triste was young, they were all men, while the leach was undeniably a woman, and yet the girl had learned, in her short years, had learned as well as those canny stones players, how to keep her face closed, how to scrub away any expression that might be read and used against her.

  “And you don’t want to kill me?”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Adare replied. What I want is to know who you are, and why il Tornja needs you dead so badly. “Obviously.”

  The leach shook her head. “Nothing is obvious. You were supposed to be in the north. Losing the war.”

  Adare ignored the barb. “I came back.”

  “Kaden allowed that?”

  “He requested it. He brokered the treaty.”

  “And the council?”

  “Is a collection of idiots.”

  Triste studied her. “Even idiots can kill. When they threw me in prison, most of those idiots were as eager to see you slaughtered as they were to watch me burn.”

  “That was nearly a year ago. Things change.”

  Triste shook her head again slowly, as though denying the possibility of change. When she spoke again, it was with a new wariness, her scarred, delicate hands closing into fists.

  “And your general—Ran il Tornja—has he returned with you?”

  Adare hesitated, wishing she could hear the question again, hear the girl’s voice as she asked it. There was a connection between il Tornja and the leach, an important connection, there had to be—that was why he had risked so much to have her killed. Adare had expected Triste to be ignorant of it all, however; just another mortal stone in the Csestriim’s plans. Triste’s question, though, the sudden tension in her shoulders as she asked it, suggested otherwise, suggested that she knew that he wanted her. Maybe even why he wanted her.

  “Do you know the kenarang?” Adare asked.

  Triste stared at her. “How would I know him?”

  “Do you?” The question came out harder than she’d intended, the words sharper, and Triste sat back in her chair, eyes hooded once more.

  “No. I don’t. Is he here?”

  Adare shook her head, trying to see past the girl’s words to the truth beneath. “The kenarang is still in the north, fighting the Urghul.”

  “But he sent you.” The statement cut a little too close to the bone, and Triste smiled grimly, as though she’d seen the answer in Adare’s face. “He sent you here for me.”

  “I came here,” Adare replied, keeping a tight rein on her voice, “to heal the rift dividing Annur.”

  Triste shook her head slowly. “You just risked your life, you just killed a girl to get me out of there. You came for me.”

  And suddenly, Adare thought, I’m answering the questions rather than asking them.

  She gestured to the glass in the middle of the table. “Drink.”

  Triste lifted the glass in one hand, raised it to the light, but made no move to take a sip.

  “What if I won’t?”

  She had seemed half addled by the drug when Adare first dragged her from the prison. There was no way to know how much adamanth the guards had been giving her—according to Nira, a dose could last for a few minutes or a full day, depending on a dozen factors—and Adare had forced the girl to take several long swigs from the bottle during their long descent through the Spear. Triste had been quiet then, pliable, sipping absently from the flask as she stared over the banister of the spiral stairs into empty space. That compliance had evaporated, however, almost as soon as they were outside the red walls. Once they were free of the Dawn Palace, as soon as the leach began to believe in her freedom, she grew more defiant.

  “If you won’t drink it yourself,” Adare replied, “someone will hold you down, and I will pour it down your throat.”

  Triste nodded, as though she’d expected as much. “So—I’m not out of prison after all.”

  Adare gestured to the room. “Do you see bars around you? Have I shackled you to the bottom of a steel cage?”

  “Not all shackles are chains. When you tell me I can go, when you open that door, and the one beyond it, then step aside, when I’m miles away and no one has stopped me—then I’ll begin to believe that you don’t have me in a cage.”

  Adare scrubbed a hand through her hair. The climb had taken its toll on her legs, and the climb had been the easiest thing she’d done all day. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Mailly clutching her knees, drinking desperately from the bottle, then doubling over as the poison began its work. Through the whole descent, whenever Adare heard a steel door slam open or shut, the echo of boots over metal, the clanking of chains, she imagined that behind it, underneath it, she could hear the girl’s screams. Even when they reached the ground, even after they exited the tower, she half expected Simit and his guards to come pouring out after them crying treason, demanding that Triste should pull back her hood. Only when she’d finally stepped inside the gate of Kegellen’s carefully guarded compound—a different mansion than the one in which she had first met Dhati and Mailly—had Adare allowed herself to relax a fraction. That was when she realized how exhausted she was.

  “Fine,” she said quietly. “You’re not free. I didn’t break you out of the middle of the Dawn Palace just so I could drop you off at the nearest tavern with a pile of coin. I need something from you. A girl died so I could get it. And so, until I do, you’re not going anywhere, you’re not seeing a ’Kent-kissing thing but these walls.” Triste’s lips tightened, but Adare was beyond caring. “I don’t trust you,” she went on. “You’re a leach and a murderer. I read the reports of what you did inside the Jasmine Court, how you paved the way for Kaden’s return.…”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I don’t care,” Adare said, cutting her off. “Later, I might need to know why you did it. Later, I might need to know all kinds of fucking things. Right now, however, what I need is for you to drink what’s in that glass. You can do it on your own, or, as I just got done saying, I can have someone pour it down your throat. It’s your choice.”

  Triste met her gaze. Her face remained still, but Adare could see a new light in those flawless eyes—anger, maybe. Or hate.

  At least she’s not just staring at the ’Kent-kissing lamps anymore.

  Without looking away, the leach raised the adamanth to her lips, drank deep, finishing it in a single swallow, then slammed the glass back to the table so violently it cracked.

  Triste grimaced, shuddered, then shook her head. “Well, one thing’s clear—y
ou’re nothing like your brother.”

  Adare almost laughed. “No. Not aside from the eyes.”

  “Even the eyes. They both blaze, but his are … colder.”

  It was a slim opening, but better than none.

  “How do you know my brother?” Adare asked. “Where did he find you?”

  She stopped herself from adding, And do you know where in Hull’s name he’s disappeared to? No need to give the girl any information she didn’t already have.

  Triste snorted. “Kaden didn’t find me. I found him. I was given to him.”

  “Given?” Adare turned the word over in her mind, trying to fit it into some comprehensible narrative. “By whom?”

  “Tarik Adiv.” Triste’s eyes went distant as she pronounced the name. The syllables sounded strange in her mouth, as though they weren’t words at all, but the sort of incomprehensible incantation so often attributed to leaches in children’s tales. The girl lingered over them as though they were a prayer or a curse. Another mystery Adare found herself powerless to plumb.

  “So,” she said, trying to work it through, “my father’s Mizran Councillor brought you to Ashk’lan? Why?”

  “Bait,” Triste replied, violet eyes brilliant and bruised as the day’s last light. “I was supposed to keep His Radiance … entertained, to make sure he was fully occupied when they sprang their trap.”

  “What trap?” Adare asked, shaking her head. “According to Kaden, there were scores of Aedolians. He was unarmed. If Adiv was so eager to see him dead, why didn’t someone put a blade through my brother’s belly the moment they arrived?” She studied the girl across from her. “Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

  “You think I knew?” Triste demanded. “You think I understood why my—why Adiv dragged me there?”

  Adare spread her hands. “Did you?”

  “I’ll tell you what I knew,” Triste growled, leaning so far over the table that her arms trembled with the effort of holding her up. “I was supposed to fuck your brother. You will let him do whatever he wants. That’s what Adiv told me. You will please him, and you will keep pleasing him. If you fail, then your mother dies. That’s what they told me. As far as I knew, that’s why I was there.”