Brian Staveley - The Emperor's blades

If the threat bothered Kaden, he didn’t show it. Those bright, calm eyes just bored into the leach, and for the first time since the start of the showdown, Valyn saw Balendin’s confidence falter.

“As I’m sure your brother will tell you,” the leach continued, “I’ve developed something of a reputation for killing people slowly, strip by strip.”

“We all have our hobbies,” Kaden replied. He could have been discussing farming techniques.

Balendin grimaced.

It’s not working, Valyn realized. Kaden doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel the fear, the anger. He had no idea how it was possible, but his brother didn’t seem to feel anything .

Then, in a flash, he understood what had to happen. “Kaden!” he began, “you have to-,” but his brother had already pivoted toward him, drawing that short knife of his, raising it in a quick motion as Balendin started to shout. Valyn met his brother’s eyes, those icy, distant flames, as Kaden closed on him. He doesn’t feel love, either, he realized as Kaden hammered the knife down with a savage thrust straight at Valyn’s head, or sorrow, or regret.…

* * *

Kaden glanced down at his brother’s body, bleeding and crumpled at his feet. Deep in the vaniate, everything the Shin taught him seemed so much easier, more natural, as though this final skill enabled all the rest. He had wanted to know the leach’s well and so he had cast his mind into the youth’s head, abandoning himself to the beshra’an as he listened to the conversation hum around him. It hadn’t been difficult then, to determine that he drew his power from emotion. It almost seemed obvious. Then it was just a matter of knocking Valyn unconscious. Some distant part of his mind hoped he hadn’t killed him, but that, too, would serve the purpose.

Kaden raised his eyes to the leach once again.

“I’m going to murder you,” Balendin panted, eyes desperate, darting.

Kaden remembered what it felt like to be afraid, but only vaguely, the way you remember a story from your childhood, events so distant, they may not have really occurred.

“Unlikely,” he replied, hefting his flatbow and leveling it at the youth’s chest. He’d never used the weapon before, but the saama’an of Valyn’s mimed instruction filled his head, and he released the catch and slid his finger onto the trigger.

“Even without my well, I’m still Kettral. You’re just a fucking monk. You don’t know shit about-”

Kaden squinted and pulled the trigger. The mechanism worked as he had anticipated. The bolt tore into the leach, and with a shriek of rage and pain, Balendin Ainhoa tumbled from the low ledge into the vast darkness of the night.

Kaden turned back to the crumpled form of his brother, knelt down, and pressed a finger firmly to his neck. He hadn’t known how hard he had to strike-he’d never knocked someone out with the pommel of his knife before-and so he’d erred on the side of caution, hitting him as hard as he could.

“Valyn,” he said, his own voice cold and distant in his ears. He slapped his brother roughly on the cheek. “Valyn, wake up.”

It took longer than he would have expected, but after thirty breaths, Valyn’s eyes flashed open. He lunged forward, snatched Kaden by the wrists, and hurled him backward onto the scree. Kaden went limp. He couldn’t fight a Kettral, not hand to hand, and he could only hope that Valyn understood the situation before he killed him. His brother was snarling, forcing him down, reaching for his belt knife, his eyes inches from Kaden’s own.

His eyes, Kaden realized, staring. Someone burned away all the color in his eyes. He hadn’t noticed before, not in the darkness, not with his focus on Balendin and the approaching Aedolians, but Valyn’s eyes, eyes that had always been oddly dark, had grown darker still. They looked like holes burned into nothingness.

“Balendin’s gone,” Kaden said, his voice calm despite the blade suddenly pressed up against his throat.

“Kaden,” Valyn gasped, searching the surrounding darkness, groping in the dirt for one of his blades. “Where? Where did he go? ”

Kaden gestured to the flatbow. “I shot him. He went over the cliff.”

For a long time Valyn just stared, then he nodded, then laughed. “Holy Hull,” he breathed, rocking back onto his heels, freeing Kaden. He let out a loud whoop. “Sweet ’Shael on a stick! How did you do it?”

“I aimed, then pulled the trigger.”

Valyn shook his head. “No, the emotion thing. I’ve been training for battle for years, and I was drowning in anger, and fear, and shit, Kaden … even now you look like you’ve been reading a somewhat dull book.”

“The Shin. They taught me … some skills.”

“I guess they fucking did !” Valyn burst out, catching his brother in a huge hug. Kaden did not return the gesture.

“Don’t we need to be moving?” he asked instead. “I’m not clear on the tactics here, but haste seems at a premium.”

Valyn let him go. “Well, don’t get all mushy on me now,” he muttered.

The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity: Valyn slapping the others awake, everyone clutching their heads, then searching desperately for lost weapons, shadows darting through the darkness.

“Kaden,” Valyn gestured, “you’re with me on the bird. It’s the safest place for now, especially if Yurl doubles back. Talal, can you delve yet?”

The leach’s eyes were still glazed, but he rose unsteadily to his feet. “I can go,” he said. “I don’t know … I don’t know about a kenning. But I can go.”

Valyn glanced from Talal to the darkness, then back again, as though wrestling with some decision. When he spoke, however, his voice was sure.

“You’re staying here. And Triste. And Gwenna.”

“Bull shit, ” the red-haired woman snapped, stepping forward.

“This is not the time, Gwenna,” Valyn replied. “Talal is busted up worse than he knows, and I’m not leaving him alone. You’re staying.”

Gwenna opened her mouth to argue, then looked over at Talal, who was leaning unsteadily against a boulder. “If you get yourselves killed,” she hissed, turning back to Valyn, “I will come down there and kick the shit out of your corpses.”

“Agreed,” Valyn said.

And then they were running down the short slope to the kettral.

“Step into this,” Valyn shouted, gesturing at a harness. Kaden did as he was told, staring as the bird gathered itself in a great burst of power and leapt into the air. Under other circumstances, the flight would have been terrifying and exhilarating both, but deep inside the vaniate, Kaden felt only calm, distance, as though he were no more than the wind rifling his robes, no more than the snow on the peaks, or the silent clouds scrubbing the sky.

“Pyrre will be down there,” he shouted, pointing toward the southeast. “She said she’d keep the others busy as long as she could.”

“What are you doing with a Skullsworn?” Valyn shouted back.

Kaden spread his hands, at a loss about how to explain. “I’m not sure. She’s on our side.”

Valyn shot him a strange look, but nodded.

It didn’t take long to find the assassin. The enemy Wing had her pinned down in a dead-end canyon about a mile and a half from the site of the Aedolian camp. One of the attacking Kettral had lit a couple of long tubes that looked like sticks, but that burned with a bright, incandescent light, illuminating the entire scene. The blond youth that Kaden took to be the Wing leader had Pyrre hemmed in, his people arranged in a loose semicircle, blocking off any escape. No one, however, had yet dared to step into the lethal circle of the woman’s spinning steel.