The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  “You should go,” the Flea said finally. “There’s nothing you can do here except get in the way.”

  Valyn let go of the birdsong. The hooves to the north were drowning it out anyway.

  “I won’t get in the way.”

  “You’re blind.”

  “Only when I’m not fighting. Only when I’m not about to die.”

  The Flea fell silent for a while, then handed him a strip of dried meat. “Then eat.”

  Valyn shook his head. “I survived in these forests a long time before we came to find you.”

  “Good for you. You still need to eat.”

  Valyn turned to face the man, measured out the next words, trying to keep his growing rage in check. “You have no idea what I need.”

  Anyone else would have recoiled at his tone. The Flea didn’t flinch. There wasn’t even a hint of fear-smell on him. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I do. I watched you grow up, Valyn. I trained you.”

  “You trained an idiotic kid who was soft as summer grass. Trust me when I tell you this: I am not him.”

  “I know that. It’s a shame.”

  For a moment Valyn lost his words. “A shame?” he managed finally. “It’s a shame? That kid was weak. He was slow. He was stupid. I may not have eyes, but back then I was fucking blind. I lost my bird, lost my Wing, sat by while Laith died, and for what? So I could let my sister stab me. So I could fail to kill il Tornja, and fall off a tower.”

  His breathing was hot and ragged in his chest, his heart pounding as though he’d just raced five miles, but there was no stopping.

  “I’m broken now, busted all to Hull, but I’m not dumb anymore. I’m not soft. If we fought now, you and I, the way we did in Assare, I’d take you apart, I’d cut you to fucking pieces.”

  He hadn’t meant to say it, but it was true. Even as he raged, he could feel the part of him that was not quite him, the part that was tainted by the slarn’s strength gathering, coiling to strike. No one, not even the Flea, could stand against that.

  “You trained me,” he went on, voice little more than a growl. “It just took me a year too long to learn what you were teaching.”

  “No,” the Flea replied. “This is not it.”

  “You don’t believe me. That’s fine. Wait until the Urghul get here.”

  “I’m not talking about fighting.”

  Valyn shook his head. “Then what are you talking about?”

  The Flea was silent a long time.

  “You know why I joined the Kettral?” he asked finally.

  “Don’t shovel me a steaming pile of shit about defending the empire, about Annurian justice.”

  “I won’t. I was a kid in Ganaboa. I barely realized I was part of the empire. I joined the Kettral because of Finn.”

  Valyn’s stomach lurched inside him. “Blackfeather Finn.”

  He could hear the Flea’s nod, the scrape of whiskers over wool. “He was from Ganaboa, too—the son of a ship captain. People forgot about that, that Ganaboa part, because his skin was so light. Anyway, when the Kettral showed up looking for recruits, Finn went. And because I loved him, I went.”

  Valyn was mute. The forest birds had gone quiet, as though they, too, heard the distant rumble of the coming horde. Love. It was a word he’d never heard from the Kettral, something the Eyrie worked hard to train out of them long before the Trial.

  “I didn’t have the words for it then—we were kids. He was my best friend. I couldn’t imagine staying in Ganaboa without him. Finn was brilliant with that bow of his, even back then. When the Kettral came to the island, came with their contest and their offer of training for the winners, Finn was certain the Eyrie would want him, and he was right.

  “I, on the other hand, didn’t know shit, barely knew what end of a knife to hold. Everyone told me I was stupid, that I was going to get the life kicked out of me in the ring while half of Ganaboa laughed, and that would be it.” He paused for a moment at the memory. “They weren’t wrong. Not about the ass-kicking, anyway. Thing was, they didn’t realize how bad I wanted it. I figured if I just kept getting up, if I just kept fighting, the Kettral would have to take me, and if they took me, I could stay with Finn. By the end of that fight I’d broken three ribs, two fingers, and an ankle. I had half of some older kid’s ear in my mouth when they hauled me off. I couldn’t walk for a month afterward, but it got me onto the Islands.

  “I thought I was done, then, but you know how it is—I wasn’t close to done. There was the training, the Trial, the early missions, more training. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. I watched it drive men crazy, and women. I watched it break them.”

  “But it didn’t break you,” Valyn said, his voice rusted.

  “For me it was easy.”

  “Easy.” Valyn coughed.

  The Flea paused. “Uncomplicated, at least,” he amended. “There was only ever one thing to think about: if I trained hard enough, if I was good enough, I could be with Finn. If the shit hit, I could keep him safe. That’s what I thought about every single morning swimming those ’Kent-kissing laps around the sound. That’s what I thought about all those long days swinging blades in the ring. All the barrel drops. All the quick-grabs and map study and language lessons. This might be the thing, I thought, that keeps him safe. This might be the thing that saves him.”

  He fell silent. Along the wall, the legionaries were calling out questions and orders, readying themselves for the attack. The Flea didn’t seem to notice.

  “And now?” Valyn asked quietly.

  “Now? I’m old. Finn’s gone. But the habits are there. I don’t think I could wake up late if I tried.” The words were soft, but Valyn could hear the grief vibrating in the other man’s voice.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Valyn asked.

  The Flea waited a few heartbeats before answering. “A couple reasons, I guess. The first is to apologize. It didn’t have to go down like that in Assare, even after Finn died. I lost control, of myself, then my Wing.”

  “You didn’t lose control,” Valyn said. “I dropped my blades, and you let me live.”

  “I was after the Skullsworn, not you.” The Flea shook his head again. “But I would have gone through you if I had to. I would have killed you all to get at her. It was a mistake. If that night had played out differently, we might have saved a lot of other lives.”

  Valyn couldn’t speak. He’d been carrying Assare inside him like a jagged stone for months, the guilt of it weighing him down, its edges shredding anything that it touched. In all that time he’d never once paused to consider another possibility—that maybe the blame wasn’t all his. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the Flea was already talking again.

  “The second reason I’m telling you this, the more important reason, is that you’ve got it wrong. I know how people see me now, even on the Islands. I’m a killer, supposedly the best killer we’ve got. Maybe I am. I’ve opened up plenty of people, some that deserved it, some that probably didn’t. I’d never argue that we are right, not me, not my Wing, not the Eyrie, but I was fighting for something.”

  He fell silent.

  “And?” Valyn asked. He’d been half holding his breath, he realized. His chest burned as though with a slow fire.

  “You, Valyn, you’re just fighting.”

  44

  It was simple enough for Kaden to lever the limp body of Long Fist over the edge of the cliff, into the roiling river below. It should have been easier to run without the Urghul chieftain across his shoulders. Long Fist had been a tall man, and strong, but his flesh had been made of honest weight. Carrying him had been no different, in its way, from lifting stones, or lugging buckets of water, and though Kaden’s frame had grown weak during his year back in Annur, his muscles and bones remembered the feel of such physical work. Nothing, however, had prepared him to carry the weight of a god lodged inside his mind.

  The thought was too large, too bright to stare directly at, and so Kaden tried to put it
aside. Il Tornja’s soldiers weren’t far behind; Triste had vanished somewhere ahead. If he didn’t reach the kenta before the Annurians, they were all dead. The god was silent—maybe baffled, maybe preparing a stronger, more deadly strike against the man who carried him—and yet even silent, even insubstantial, the alien weight bore down on Kaden until he felt he might collapse.

  Just get to the kenta, he told himself, staggering after Triste’s footsteps. Get to the kenta. You can face what you’ve done when you’re safe on the other side.

  Canyon gave way to ledge, ledge to ramp, ramp to rough-hewn steps, worn almost smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Who had built them, or when, or why, Kaden had no idea. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they offered a way out, a way free, and so he followed them down, down, as they flanked the soaring sandstone wall, a hundred steps, two hundred, and then he was there at the bottom, in a maze of ancient buildings the size of a modest town.

  The whole thing was built on a long, rocky shelf only a little higher than the river itself. Debris from the floodline marked the lowest stones of the buildings that were still standing. Most of those by the river had been washed away; several teetered out over the current, as though caught in the act of crumbling. Everything was built of huge sandstone blocks, evidently quarried from the local cliffs. The heavy clay that had once cemented them together, chinking the gaps, had mostly crumbled away, rotting the foundations, leaving huge holes in the walls.

  Triste’s footsteps led straight down the central avenue, but Kaden hesitated, some sense honed in the glacial cold of the Bone Mountains pricking the skin along the back of his neck. Something was wrong about this place. He ran his eyes over the fallen façades and gaping entryways. Obelisks and great plinths lay shattered and askew, toppled either by the river’s seasonal rush or their own unrelenting weight. In recessed grottoes carved into the canyon wall stood a series of blocks that looked like altars, though no text remained to name the gods for whom they had been built. The old stones were strange, unexpected, but it wasn’t the stones that had set Kaden’s mind on edge.

  Behind him, he could just make out the sound of the Annurian soldiers, boots clattering over the ledges above, shouts echoing off the cliffs. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, exhaled, then opened them again. The whole exercise took precious moments, and he still couldn’t say what it was about the ancient buildings that had given him pause.

  More looking does not mean more seeing. The quiet voice was Scial Nin’s, conjured from the depths of his memory.

  Swallowing his misgivings, Kaden stumbled into a run once more, following Triste’s tracks between the ruined buildings. She couldn’t know where the kenta was, but her footsteps showed no sign of hesitation. If anything, she was running faster, panicking, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the soldiers behind. Trying to escape from me, too, Kaden realized. The sheathed belt knife slapped against his thigh as he ran, a reminder of the violence with which he’d threatened the girl.

  “Triste,” he called, pausing for a moment to listen for her response. Stopping now was a risk. Calling out was a risk. On the other hand, if she overshot the kenta, there would be no time to double back.

  “Triste!” he shouted again.

  There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, thin and hollow above the raging of the river. Somewhere in the vast labyrinth of his own mind, Meshkent stirred. There were no words, but Kaden could feel the god’s urgency, his rage. Thoughts and emotions that were not Kaden’s own pressed out, testing, searching for a way free.

  “No,” he murmured, shoving away all other concerns to focus on the prison he had made. The walls were there, solid and strong, but even in the short time since Long Fist’s death, the god had begun to wear down the barriers. It was an assault as wordless and violent as the river’s flow, and Kaden could feel that, like the river, it would never rest. Meshkent was inside him now, the impossible current of the divine carving into his own walls, searching for a freedom as wide as the sea. “No,” Kaden said again, taking a heartbeat to fortify himself, to buttress those invisible walls, then hurling himself into motion once more.

  He rounded the next corner at a run, and for a few steps into the small plaza he kept running, his legs going through their motions even as his mind struggled to parse the sight: there were armed men in the open square, dozens of them, their bows half drawn, their blades naked in their hands. They wore no uniforms, but something about their deployment, both the organization and the way they stood, whispered the same word over and over: soldiers. Annurian soldiers. Kaden stumbled to a halt, his mind scrambling to make sense of the scene, to come up with another plan, eyes scanning for some escape.

  “Hello, Kaden.” The man who spoke sat on a wide block of fallen stone, half reclining on one elbow, a booted foot propped up on the stone. Unlike the soldiers around him, who looked ready to fight, to kill, this man seemed like he ought to be playing the harp, or eating ripe papaya from a porcelain bowl.

  No, Kaden realized, his bones going cold, not a man.

  Though he’d never seen the creature in person, he knew that face, had studied it back in the Temple of Ciena what seemed like years ago. Triste’s mother had made the painting. But she didn’t get it right, he thought bleakly. Not quite. The courtesan had captured the sharp eyes and the casual smile that bordered on a smirk, she’d inked in the same amusement and disdain, but she had missed the emptiness behind it all. She had painted Ran il Tornja, the human general, without ever realizing that the mind behind that face was alien and inimical, that it was Csestriim.

  “Run,” the general said, smiling, waving a lazy hand.

  In truth, Kaden had been about to do just that, but the single syllable brought him up short, triggering some primitive wariness.

  Il Tornja’s smile widened, as though he’d expected that precise response. “Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter.”

  Kaden felt Meshkent go dangerously still inside his mind, an animal trapped in the back of a cage. While the Csestriim studied him, Kaden piled layers of his own thought on top of the god’s cell, heaping on his terrors and regrets, his confusion and stillborn hopes, any scraps of self to hide the mind he carried inside. He had no idea what il Tornja could see with those inhuman eyes, but one thing was clear—the Csestriim could not be allowed to catch even a glimpse of the god.

  “You weren’t—” Kaden began.

  Il Tornja cut him off, finishing the sentence with a grin. “Chasing along behind you? No. Chasing is tiring, especially in this heat. It’s so much more effective just to go to the right place at the start.”

  “How did you know we’d come here?”

  The kenarang pursed his lips as though considering the question, then shook his head. He almost looked regretful. “I could tell you something about patterns and probabilities, but it wouldn’t mean much. Like trying to explain mathematics to an ant.” He shrugged, as though that settled the question. “Anyway, you’re here. More importantly, she’s here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  Triste.

  The girl slumped between a pair of soldiers, hair falling forward over her face, chin lolling against her chest. There was no sign of violence, but something had knocked her unconscious.

  “Not the most hospitable greeting,” il Tornja said, as though reading Kaden’s thoughts, “but from what I hear, she’s pretty dangerous. I didn’t want to end up a smear of blood and flesh like those poor people back in the Jasmine Court.” He cocked his head to the side. “You were there for that, right? Was it as bad as people say?”

  Panic surged inside Kaden, a rabid dog hurling itself against its chain. The vaniate beckoned, but he couldn’t trust himself inside the trance. Instead he seized the panic, choked it until it stopped squirming, until he could think. Facts tumbled over him like cold rain: Triste wasn’t dead. Maybe Kiel was wrong. Maybe il Tornja didn’t know about the goddess. Maybe he didn’t want to kill her. Maybe they could escape. She could wa
ke up. Ciena could fight her way free the way she’d done before. It wasn’t over. It wasn’t over. It couldn’t all be over.

  Il Tornja drummed his fingers against the stone and smiled. “Anyway, it was a good lesson, and I owe it to you: always have a leach on your side.” He pointed lazily.

  Kaden followed the gesture to an old man, bent and balding, who stood half a dozen paces from the kenarang. Kaden hadn’t noticed him at first, surrounded as he was by soldiers with their weapons drawn.

  “Everyone thinks that leaches are insane,” il Tornja continued, shaking his head. “It’s not fair, really. They just see the world … differently from you or me.”

  “You and I do not share a view of the world,” Kaden said, surprised that his own voice came out steady.

  The general raised his brows. “Oh, I’m not so sure about that! Those monks who trained you, those Shin—I think they’re really on to something. I’ll bet, if we sat down, you’d find that you and I see eye to eye about a lot more than you realize.” He winked, held Kaden’s gaze a moment, then turned his attention back to the old man. “Roshin, though, he’s a little different. Loyal, though, and that’s important to me.”

  Roshin. Kaden struggled to make sense of the name. Who would name a son after one of the most hated creatures in recorded history? The world had mostly forgotten the Csestriim, but it remembered the Atmani, remembered the horror they had wrought, the devastation. Across two continents and beyond, the names were still spoken with loathing.

  The truth resolved so suddenly, so violently, it felt like a leather belt whipped across Kaden’s naked brain. Some part of his mind buried deep beneath all rational thought made out the pattern: Roshin wasn’t named for the Atmani. He was the Atmani.

  Il Tornja had leaned forward slightly, as though eager to watch the understanding play out in Kaden’s eyes. “You see?”