For a moment, it was all Adare could do to stay on her feet.
“They didn’t even get close,” she breathed quietly. “Five Wings of Kettral attacking simultaneously, and they didn’t even get close.”
“It’s worse than that,” Nira said. “That victory just dug his well deeper, filled it higher.”
Adare turned to the older woman.
“Think of your awe,” Nira continued quietly. She gestured to the Urghul, to the Annurians manning the walls. “Now multiply that by a hundred thousand.”
* * *
Gwenna was still cursing when Quick Jak put the bird down south of the wall, in the open square that served as the Kettral command and control. Only there were no Kettral left, none but her own Wing.
“The ’Shael-spawned son of a fucking whore,” Gwenna snarled. “That bastard. That son of a bitch.”
The curses weren’t directed at anyone, they weren’t even coherent, but they kept her from sobbing.
She’d known it was a risk. They all had. She’d known, when she gave the order to attack, that people wouldn’t be coming back, that Balendin would put up some kind of fight and that people would die. She’d known there was a possibility that the leach was just too strong, and she’d made the choice to go after him anyway, before he got even stronger. She’d known all of it, and yet seeing the birds burst into flame, seeing the men and women she’d so hastily trained burning, falling, dying … she hadn’t known how much that would hurt.
The fact that her own Wing had survived only made it worse, and when Quick Jak dropped off Allar’ra’s back, Gwenna went at him with a fury, seizing him by the throat and throwing him to the ground. The fact that she could see the fear in his eyes, that she could smell the stink of panic on him, made her want to kill him right there and be done with it.
“Why did you peel off?” she demanded.
“Gwenna,” Talal said quietly.
“Stay out of this, Talal.” She didn’t take her eyes off the flier. “Why did you peel off?”
Jak managed to shake his head slightly. “He … had us. You saw.…”
“You don’t know that,” Gwenna shouted. “You don’t know that, you worthless piece of shit. The plan, the fucking plan, was to go in hard and keep going. That’s what the other Wings did, or maybe you were too busy shitting your pants to notice.”
Jak’s face was purpling, but he made no move to fight back or try to pull free.
“Other Wings…,” he managed, “died.”
“Sometimes that happens,” Gwenna screamed. “Sometimes when you’re fighting, people fucking die. It doesn’t mean you stop fighting. The only reason you stop fighting is you’re too frightened, because you’re a coward, because something’s fucking broken inside you.”
The flier opened his mouth, then closed it, shut his eyes.
“Gwenna,” Talal said again, taking her by the shoulders this time, pulling her back. “Get off of him. We’re alive because he saved us.”
Gwenna slammed the flier’s head against the ground once, then straightened up to shove a finger in Talal’s face.
“He saved us,” she hissed, “by running away. I ordered those other Wings into the fight. I told them we were all going, that we were making a concerted attack, together, and then I ran away.”
“Would it be better if we were dead?”
“Yes!” she said, shocked at her own conviction. “Yes.”
Talal shook his head slowly. “No.”
Behind them, Quick Jak was getting unsteadily to his feet. Gwenna took a long, shuddering breath, held it for a few heartbeats, then let it out. Then she did it again, and again. When you fight, Hendran wrote, people die. It’s only human to care, but you need to cut out that human thing. If you care too much, you lose.
When she thought she could speak without screaming, she turned to face her Wing.
“Stay with the bird,” she said, then gestured toward the wall and the tower punctuating it. “I’m going to tell the Emperor we failed.”
* * *
Adare had just sent out a dozen runners east and west along the wall. The fight with the Kettral had been pretty hard to miss, but all the same, she wanted to make sure the Sons of Flame understood what was coming.
The leach is going to hit us today, she told the messenger. And we think he’s going to hit us here, at this tower.
That, at least, was what Nira believed, for reasons Adare didn’t fully understand. Maybe the old woman was right, and maybe she was just finally going insane, but after seeing the Kettral scrubbed from the sky, Adare needed to do something, and sending out a warning was something. She was searching for another task when Gwenna stepped up through the trapdoor and onto the tower’s top.
“Your Radiance,” she said, bowing her head. The genuflection was uncharacteristic. “The attack failed.”
Adare bit back the first sharp retort that came to mind. “I saw,” she said instead. “I’m sorry for your soldiers.”
The words sounded stiff, useless, formulaic, but what else was there to say? The leach had just shattered the best weapon that Adare could bring against him, shattered it without even the slightest hint of effort.
“Thank you, Your Radiance. We can mourn the fallen later. We have one bird left. What are your orders?”
Adare was still trying to formulate an answer when a runner stumbled up through the trapdoor, sweating and out of breath.
“The kenarang,” he managed after a moment. “Your Radiance, I’ve come from the palace. Kiel sent me. He says he had eyes on the kenarang.…”
Nira stiffened at Adare’s side. “Where?” she demanded.
“Inside … the Spear,” the man gasped. “He had a hundred soldiers, and he went into the Spear.”
Adare stared. She could feel the warning from il Tornja, the single slip of paper folded inside her pocket.
“That’s where Kaden’s going,” she murmured. “That bastard. He’s always a step ahead.”
Gwenna studied her. “I don’t know why in Hull’s name Kaden would want to get inside the Spear, but he’s not headed that way. We caught a glimpse of him. Valyn was taking him west. Away from the palace. Which is just as well, since the whole ’Kent-kissing Army of the North was in his way if he tried to go east.”
“West,” Adare murmured. “They changed the plan?”
Nira snorted. “Faced with a whole army. Wouldn’t you?”
Adare took a deep breath. She could feel a sudden spark of hope inside her, hot, bright, horrible. Do not interfere, il Tornja had warned her, with anything south of the wall. I have your son.
Adare shuddered, replied silently, But I have you. Now. For the first time. I have you trapped.
“When?” she demanded, rounding on the messenger. “When did he go in?”
“Long time ago,” the man replied. “It took … time to cross the city.” He shook his head wearily. “I’m sorry, Your Radiance.”
“A long time ago,” Adare said, hope’s spark kindling to a fire. “And he hasn’t left?”
The man shook his head. “Not that I know, Your Radiance.”
“Good,” Adare said, nodding slowly. “Good.”
“’Fuck’s good about the kenarang takin’ control of your palace?” Nira demanded.
“He’s not in the palace,” Adare replied, smiling. “He’s in the Spear. It’s time for Intarra to pull her weight.”
“Meanin’ what?”
“It’s time for a miracle.”
Nira studied Adare from beneath hooded lids. “And if the goddess don’t comply?”
“Oh, I’m through waiting for the fucking goddess.”
“Meanin’ what?” Nira asked again, even more quietly this time.
“Meaning I’m going to set her Spear on fire.”
* * *
We’re killing good men, Valyn thought as the palace guardsman crumpled beneath his ax. He’d hit the man with the blunt back of the metal head, trusting to the soldier’s helmet to cushion the
blow. He’d probably survive. With any luck, most of them would survive. The Flea was fighting mostly with the flats of his blades, and Sigrid, too, but sometimes the only way past a man was through him, and Valyn would be shipped to ’Shael if he failed in this last, mad dash because he was too delicate to spill the necessary blood.
After Sigrid smashed through the Water Gate, the Dawn Palace had erupted into utter madness. The normal guardsmen, baffled by what seemed an unprovoked attack, were coming at them from every direction, spears waving stupidly in the air. If there had been more time, Kaden might have talked to them—he had the eyes, they would accept him in his own palace—but there was no time. Il Tornja’s soldiers were inside the red walls, too, just behind them, fighting their own way forward, and if that weren’t enough, the Aedolians, drawn to the sound of violence, kept attacking in knots of two or four.
At least Kaden and Triste had managed not to panic. They moved forward in the center of the rough triangle of Kettral, Kaden trying to shield Triste with his body. Trying to shield her, Valyn thought, or the goddess inside her. His brother’s claim still sounded outlandish, insane, but there was no time to dwell on it. They were ducks moving through the various avenues and courtyards of the palace. Whatever had to happen inside the Spear didn’t matter, not in the instant; getting there was a simple, tactical imperative. The staircase above the lower floors was almost perfectly defensible. With high ground and a vertical choke point, the three Kettral should be able to hold against whatever soldiers il Tornja threw at them. They just needed to get inside.
The Jasmine Court was the last open space before the Spear, and they hit it at a full run. The Flea had snatched up a bow somewhere in the fight. Halfway across the courtyard, he dropped to a knee, loosed half a dozen shafts at the cordon of men lined up in front of the entrance to the tower.
Not palace guards, Valyn realized grimly. Il Tornja’s soldiers.
“Army,” the Flea shouted, noticing the same thing, dropping the bow, and drawing his blades once more.
“Stay behind me,” Valyn bellowed back to Kaden. “Stay low.”
There were seven or eight men remaining, three with flatbows. He could see the terror painted across their faces, could hear the panic in their smashing hearts. They were legionaries, like the ones he’d been killing in the street beyond, but that didn’t mean they were evil. They were following orders, obeying the general who for the past year had saved Annur over and over. Maybe they were good men and maybe they weren’t, but they hardly deserved to die for their loyalty. It had been a long time since he’d lived in a world where anyone got what they deserved.
Without breaking stride, Valyn threw one ax, then another. Two soldiers crumpled. The third managed to get off a shot without even aiming. It flew preposterously wide, and then the Flea and Sigrid were on them, moving like dancers, all steel and fists as they slashed knees, broke faces, opened the bodies for Ananshael to do his final, quiet work.
Only when they were inside the tower did the violence die off. It was like racing from the chaos of a stampede into a quiet chapel, all polished wood and bronze, robed men with soft flesh and quiet slippers going wide-eyed at their approach, then jerking back to the sides of the staircase, standing still, silent, frozen as deer, waiting for death to pass them by.
“We made it,” Triste groaned.
“Not yet,” Kaden replied. “We need to reach the top.”
The Flea grunted, kept his blades out. “Lot of stairs between here and there. Keep the feet moving.”
And so they moved, climbing first through the human floors built into the ancient structure, then clear of that mortal work, into the enormous column of light and empty air. Valyn paused, his chest heaving inside him. It had been almost ten years since he was last inside Intarra’s Spear, ten years since he and Kaden had climbed these same stairs together, pausing on the landings to spit over the edge, ignoring the admonitions of their Aedolians as they watched the spit fall away, break apart, disappear long before it struck the roof below. The memory twisted inside him like a knife. That child was a stranger, one more Annurian murdered in the war, vanished without even leaving a corpse.
He glanced over at his brother. Kaden’s eyes burned. Hotter than I remembered, Valyn thought. Brighter. He was still calm, preternaturally so for someone who had just fled for his life through the streets of Annur, who had just watched dozens of men cut into meat, who carried in his breath and bones the Lord of Pain himself. That glacial indifference Valyn had smelled on him back in the Bone Mountains, however, was gone. There was no monastic self-abnegation in the arm he had wrapped around Triste’s slender shoulders. Kaden cared what happened here. Valyn could smell the sorrow on him, the wet-rain scent of coming loss.
“More movement,” the Flea called out. He and Sigrid had taken up a position just behind them. “Il Tornja’s friends can climb stairs the same as we can.”
The warning was hardly necessary. Valyn could hear the heavy clomp of boots. Ten floors down, maybe twelve, but coming. He turned back to Kaden.
“Where?” he demanded.
Kaden raised a single finger. “Up,” he said again. “We need to reach the top.”
Valyn nodded. “Get to the prison level. Sigrid, the Flea, and I can hold them there. How long does this ceremony take?”
Kaden shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.” He seemed, suddenly, to be struggling with something, some unexpected pain welling up inside him. His face twitched, then went still. “Just get us up there.”
He held Valyn’s gaze a moment, then turned back to Triste. She was crying, tears standing in her violet eyes, obviously exhausted. Despite it all, she nodded. Then they were moving once again.
The fierce, vicious bliss that had buoyed Valyn up during the whole race through Annur had faded the moment the violence lapsed. His legs were a leaden blaze as he labored up the stairs. Breath burned his chest. From the sound of it, the others were struggling, too, and yet it was working. Once they reached the prison level they could throw shut the steel doors. The soldiers below wouldn’t be able to touch them.
He glanced over at Kaden.
“We’re going to make it,” he said.
Then he smelled the smoke. There was just a hint of it at first, faint and acrid, then stronger and stronger. He paused, holding the railing to keep from falling over, closed his eyes, and listened. His stomach twisted when he realized what he was hearing: below the rumble of boots on the stairs, below the desperate breathing of the people around him, below his own blood pounding in his ears, a quieter, more dangerous sound: the hiss and roar of fire, fire inside the Spear itself, gnawing through the floors below, quiet, but getting louder.
* * *
Quick Jak was going over Allar’ra’s tail feathers when Gwenna returned to the Wing. Annick and Talal were talking quietly a few paces from the flier—Gwenna couldn’t quite make out the words. She hesitated at the edge of the large square, stayed in the wall’s cool shadow for a moment. It was easier than facing them all again, easier than seeing her failure reflected in their eyes. She started to lean against the stones, then shoved herself upright.
“Knock it off, you bitch,” she muttered to herself.
She straightened her shoulders, checked her blades, then strode from the shadows into the open space.
“We failed,” she said. The three turned to watch her approach. Talal looked concerned; Quick Jak, wary, then scared. Gwenna shoved down her own fury. “We failed,” she said again, “but we are not done fighting. Right now, I need to hear it, all your best ideas on how we can get at Balendin before he blows the doors right off this ’Kent-kissing city.”
“Go in on foot,” Annick said after a pause. “He’s seen the birds. He knows we escaped, so he’ll be prepared for another air attack. If we can infiltrate that group of prisoners, get close to him…”
“We’ll just be easier to kill,” Talal said quietly. He shook his head. “He’s too strong. He has the awe of the whole Urghul natio
n to draw on, and the growing terror of every citizen in Annur. Right now, he might be the most powerful leach since the Atmani, and that power’s not going away unless a million people suddenly forget all about him.” He shook his head again. “I’ll go with you. I’ll try it the way Annick says. I just don’t see how we can win.”
Jak hadn’t spoken, hadn’t met Gwenna’s eyes since she returned.
“What about you?” she asked, more harshly than she’d intended.
For a long time, he didn’t reply. Then, instead of turning to her, he leveled an unsteady finger over her shoulder, southeast, toward Intarra’s Spear. “What,” he asked quietly, “is happening?”
Gwenna knew what was coming, and still she couldn’t help but stare. The base of the huge tower had begun to glow. It might have been a trick of reflected light, the sun’s low rays glancing off the unbreakable glass. That light moved, however, writhed inside the column, growing brighter and brighter until the whole tower seemed ablaze with it.
“The Emperor,” Gwenna replied grimly. “She heard il Tornja went inside, so she lit the fucking thing on fire.”
It had seemed like an insane plan, reckless and desperate, but then, Gwenna’s own plans hadn’t worked out so well, and so she’d kept her mouth shut when Adare sent the orders. She was the Emperor, after all. She could set fire to her own tower if she wanted to.
The blaze, however, was like no ordinary fire. The glass walls soaked in the light, and though the glow had started in the lower floors, the whole Spear was red-gold with it now, like a lance of flame stabbed into the cloud. Quick Jak’s jaw had dropped wide open, and even Annick looked impressed. Adare had wanted a miracle, and she had one, a raging, golden column high as the sky. Gwenna could hear the amazement up on the walls, soldiers gasping, turning, pointing at the pillar of fire in the center of their city, forgetting, if only for a moment, the army to their north.
And then she saw it.
“The bird,” Gwenna growled. The urgency was so sharp it hurt. She shoved Jak with one hand, dragged Talal with the other. “Get on the fucking bird, this is our chance.”
The Last Mortal Bond Page 83