Brian Staveley - The Emperor's blades

Her lips were turned down in something that was either a scowl or a frown of commiseration-it was hard to tell with her. Could she be part of it? Valyn wondered. It seemed ludicrous to suppose a high-level conspiracy bent at overthrowing the most powerful family in the world would enlist a cadet who hadn’t even passed the Trial. Still, there was an intensity in Gwenna’s green eyes that was hard to comprehend. Valyn had no idea how long she had been watching him, but when he looked over she pointed to the buckle linking his harness to the bird’s thick, scaly leg. He glanced down and discovered to his alarm that he hadn’t clinched the safety properly. If the bird stooped hard, he could have been ripped right off the talons, tossed a thousand paces to his death on the waves below.

You ’Kent-kissing idiot, he muttered to himself, yanking the leather tight, then nodding curtly to Gwenna. No one’s going to need to kill you if you take care of it for them. With an effort, he forced his apprehensions down. Whatever plots were afoot, he couldn’t foil them while dangling from his harness. There was nothing to do while strapped in to the bird but rest, and he tried to settle back into the rigging, to let his weary muscles slacken for a while, to find some of the calm he usually felt while soaring over the waves.

At sea level, it would be hot and humid already, the kind of day that plastered your shirt to your back and slicked your sword grip with sweat, but Laith was holding the bird a thousand paces up, where the sun warmed without scorching while the kettral’s enormous wingspan provided plenty of shade for Valyn, Gwenna, and the two other cadets strapped in and balancing on the huge talons. He tried closing his eyes, but it was no good. Visions of his father’s face filled his mind. Or was it Kaden’s? All he could see were those golden irises, flaming high, then quenched as blood rose in the sockets.

He shook his head to clear away the visions, opened his eyes, then checked over his belt knife, short blades, and buckle once more, running through the standard flight list over and over. Gwenna had continued watching him, he realized, and he stilled his hands, redirecting his attention to the land and sea inching by below.

He could see most of the Qirins by now, the slender chain stretching across the waves like a necklace of islands. Qarsh, the largest of the group, lay just a little to the south, and Valyn could see the sandy beaches, dense stands of mangroves, dusty limestone bluffs, and the various buildings of Eyrie command-barracks, mess hall, training arenas, storehouses-as clearly as if they were lines inked on a map. A few ships, a merchant ketch and a couple of sloops by the look of them, lolled at anchor in the harbor, and almost directly beneath him, a sleek-hulled cutter sliced through the surf, making for the port.

Qarsh was his home-not just the long, low barracks that he’d shared with twenty-five other cadets for the past eight years or the mess hall where he took his meals, exhausted and numb after a long day of training, but the whole island, from the rocky headlands to the winding waterways between the mangroves. It was familiar, even comforting, in a way the Dawn Palace had never been. The Islands were his . Until now.

After the Aedolian’s warning and the death of his father, the small archipelago looked different somehow, strange, treacherous, gravid with menace. One of the ships in the harbor might carry the men who had boarded the Aedolian vessel and slaughtered the crew. Someone in the barracks or mess hall, someone he had passed a thousand times in the training ring or labored beside in the storeroom, could be plotting to kill him. Those winding rocky trails offered too much seclusion, too many twists and turns where a man could disappear without anyone the wiser, and Kettral training afforded a thousand opportunities for “accidents”-botched drops, rigged munitions, sharp bits of steel just about everywhere you looked. In the space of a single morning, his home had become a trap.

The bird skimmed above the wide landing field just to the west of the harbor, and Valyn leapt from the talons. A small cluster of his peers waited at the edge of the field, some awkwardly fingering their belt knives, some openly studying him as he approached. Word traveled fast among the Kettral.

Gent Herren stepped forward first, shaking his massive head. “Hard luck,” he growled, extending a hand like a mallet. The huge cadet stood at least a foot taller than Valyn and had shoulders to match. He looked like a bear-curly brown hair on his arms and chest hiding the pale skin beneath-and generally seemed about as tame as one, although now his manner was subdued. “Your father ran a tight ship,” he went on, as though unsure quite what to say.

“A loss for the empire,” Talal added. Talal was a leach, and like all leaches, he kept mostly to himself. Still, he and Valyn had cooperated on a few training exercises over the years, and Valyn had developed a wary trust for him, despite his strange and tainted powers. In addition to his blacks, Talal wore an array of glittering bracelets, bands, and rings, and his ears were pierced with hoops and studs. On another man, such adornment would have been a mark of vanity and frivolity; on Talal, the glints and glimmers of metal were as lighthearted as the flash of an assassin’s blade. “Do they have any idea what happened?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Valyn replied. “I don’t know. Treachery. That was all they told me.”

Gent ground his knuckles into a meaty palm. “Fane and the Flea will find the ’Kent-kissing bastards. They’ll find ’em and sort ’em right out.”

Valyn nodded halfheartedly. It was a tempting vision-Wings of Kettral dragging the conspirators out into the light, beating the truth from them, and then executing them in the middle of the Annurian Godsway. It wouldn’t bring his father back, but justice carried its own cold satisfaction, and Valyn would breathe easier once the killers were hanged. Provided it proves that simple, he thought to himself grimly. A hard, realistic voice inside himself told him it would not.

“You’d better keep a closer watch on your ’Kent-kissing buckles,” Gwenna said, shouldering into the conversation. Her green eyes flashed with rage, and she planted a finger right in the middle of Valyn’s chest, driving her nail into his sternum. “You almost ended up in the drink back there.”

“I know,” Valyn replied, refusing to step back.

“He just found out his father was murdered,” Gent protested.

“Oh, the poor thing, ” Gwenna snapped back. “Maybe we should keep him on bed rest and spoon-feed him warm milk for a week.”

“Gwenna,” Talal began, holding out a hand to placate her, “there’s no need-”

“There’s every fucking need,” she replied acidly. “He makes a mistake because his head’s in the clouds, he could get himself killed. He could get someone else killed.”

“Give it a rest, Gwenna,” Gent rumbled, his voice menacing as a distant avalanche.

She ignored both the other cadets and fixed her green eyes on Valyn. “I catch you doing something like that again, I’m reporting it. I’ll report it straight to Rallen. You understand?”

Valyn met her gaze squarely. “I appreciate the fact that you noticed the buckle. Could have saved my life. But I left my mother eight years ago when I set sail for the Islands, and I don’t need you stepping in to play the role.”

She pursed her lips as though she intended to argue the point. He took half a step backwards, shifting his weight and freeing his hand from his belt. The Kettral were a prickly bunch, and arguments, even small arguments, often came to blows. He had no idea why Gwenna was so mad, but he’d seen her take a swing at other cadets before, and he wasn’t about to be caught wrong-footed. Back on the mainland, there were plenty of fools who would have scoffed at the threat of a woman’s punch-but back on the mainland, the women weren’t trained to crush your trachea or gouge out an eye. After a tense moment, however, Gwenna shook her head, snarled something about “fucking incompetence,” and stalked off toward the barracks.