Brian Staveley - The Emperor's blades

“All I could think was, Not again . I wasn’t going to let him hurt anyone else. Never again.” He clenched his fists, and blood flowed from the wound, puddling on the stone.

“But his hands…,” Kaden said, slowly. “Was it necessary?”

“ Fuck necessary,” Valyn replied, voice hard and brittle as steel too long hammered.

Kaden considered his brother for a long time, trying to read the tight cords running beneath his skin, the unconscious grimace, the nicks and scars that marked his face and hands. It was like studying a scroll in some long-forgotten language. Rage, Kaden reminded himself. This is rage, and pain, and confusion. He recognized the emotions, but after so many years among the Shin, he had forgotten how raw they could be.

Finally, he reached out and placed a hand over Valyn’s fist. The monks weren’t much for physical contact, and the sensation was odd, something remembered from a childhood so distant, it might have been a dream. At first Kaden thought his brother would pull away, but after a dozen heartbeats he felt the fist relax.

“What happened?” Kaden asked. “What happened to you?”

Valyn snorted. “Got a week?”

“How about the short version?”

“I learned to kill people, saw some people killed, fought some nasty beasts, drank some nasty stuff, and came out with black eyes, powers I don’t understand, and enough rage to burn a city to the bones.

“What about you?” he asked, the question more challenge than inquiry. “You’re not exactly the bookish monk I’d been expecting. I thought you were going to murder me last night.”

Kaden nodded slowly. If Valyn had changed in the years apart-well, then, so had he. “The short version?”

“We can delve into details later.”

“I got hit, cut, frozen, and buried. Men I trusted killed everyone I knew, and then, for a few minutes, I figured out how to stop caring about any of it.”

Valyn stared at him. Kaden met the gaze. The silence stretched on and on until, without warning, Valyn started laughing, slowly at first, almost morbidly, then with more abandon, his body shaking on the narrow ledge until he was wiping away tears. Kaden watched for a while, confused, detached, until some childish part of him, something buried deep inside his mind awoke and responded. Then he was laughing, too, gasping in great breaths of air until his stomach hurt.

“Holy Hull,” Valyn choked, shaking his head. “Holy fucking Hull. We should have stayed in the palace and kept playing with sticks.”

Kaden could only nod.

* * *

“It’s not over,” Tan said.

Kaden turned to find the monk climbing the short steep slope to where they sat, Pyrre a foot or so behind him. For a few pleasant minutes, the brothers had sat side by side, laughing at horror, trying to recollect something of their past, but the past was gone, finished, and the future loomed. A hundred paces back, in the dubious shelter of the pass, the rest of the group was making preparations to move out; Laith checked over the bird while the sniper and the red-haired girl sorted through the weapons of the dead Aedolians. Triste was shoving something that might have been food into a large sack.

As Tan drew alongside, he reached into his robe, then flicked something out onto the ledge. It rolled toward Kaden, bumping up against his leg before coming to rest.

Valyn looked up at the monk, then picked up the small red orb, squeezing it between his fingers until it bulged like a grape.

“What is this?”

“An eye,” Kaden said, the mirth gone out of him as quickly as it had come. The memory of the ring of ak’hanath circling tighter and tighter, bloody eyes flickering in the moonlight, chilled him. How Tan had emerged from that fight at all, he couldn’t say, though the battle had taken its toll: the monk’s robe was cut to tatters, his body bruised. A long gash ran from his scalp to his jaw, and Triste had spent the better part of the day washing out the long rents in his flesh, binding them with bandages made from the uniforms of the dead Aedolians.

“Must’ve been an ugly bastard,” Valyn said, considering the eye a moment longer, then flicking it toward Kaden, “but at least it had eyes.” Something dark and haggard passed across his gaze.

Kaden caught the sphere, turned it until he could consider the pupil in the fading light-a dark, ragged slash, like something hacked out of the iris with a knife.

“How are your wounds?” he asked, looking up at Tan.

The monk moved stiffly, but his face betrayed no pain, and he waved a hand as though the question didn’t warrant an answer. Kaden wondered briefly if the man had found a way to live inside the vaniate.

“The Csestriim have returned,” he said.

“Csestriim,” Valyn replied, sucking air between his teeth. “That’s what Yurl claimed. It’s tough to believe.”

“It is necessary to believe,” Tan replied. “Some of them have survived this long precisely because people failed to believe.”

“Adiv?” Kaden asked, voicing the question that had been on his mind all day as he watched the kettral circle and search. “You think he’s Csestriim?”

Tan considered him with a flat, disapproving stare. “Speculation.”

Valyn glanced from the older monk to his pupil and back. If he felt any deference toward Tan, Kaden couldn’t see it.

“I’m not sure what’s so wrong with speculation, and I have no ’Kent-kissing idea where those two bastards ended up, but I’ll tell you one thing-they’re not our problem anymore.”

Kaden frowned. “One of them might be Csestriim and the other is a Kettral-trained emotion leach who nearly destroyed your Wing.”

“And now we have two birds,” Valyn shot back. “Balendin and the minister are on foot with no food or water and no gear to speak of. We can be in the air by nightfall and out of this miserable maze of mountains you call home by morning. Of course,” he added grimly, “that brings us to our real problem-the Flea.”

Kaden looked over at Tan and Pyrre. The Skullsworn shrugged; Tan made no reply at all.

“What,” Kaden asked finally, turning back to Valyn, “is a flea?”

“The Flea is the best Wing commander in the Eyrie. He makes Yurl and me look like children, and his Wing is just as good as he is.”

“And he’s part of the plot?” Pyrre asked. Ut had left her with a light slice across the shoulder, but otherwise she seemed none the worse for wear. “Why can’t some of the really dangerous players be on our side for a while?”

“I have no idea if he’s part of the plot,” Valyn replied, his expression bleak, “but I’ll tell you this-he’s coming for us, sure as shit. He’s probably one day back, sent up as soon as my Wing went rogue. Yurl and Balendin were part of it, and we don’t know how far up the conspiracy goes.”

Pyrre shrugged. “If he’s not part of the plot, he’s not part of the problem. Kaden,” she said, making an exaggerated curtsy, “bright be the days of his life, rules the empire now, which means he waves his little finger and your Flea has to start bowing or kissing the dirt or whatever it is you Annurians do.”

“You don’t know much about the Flea,” Valyn said, “or about Kettral. It’s the mission that matters. My Wing disobeyed orders to come after you. As far as the Eyrie’s concerned, we’re traitors.”

“The Kettral serve the empire,” Pyrre replied, “which means they serve the Emperor, which means, they serve him.” She poked a finger at Kaden. “Working for Kaden is, by definition, not treachery.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Kaden said, thinking through this angle for the first time. “Imperial history has been pretty messy at times: brother fighting brother, sons killing fathers. Atlatun the Unlucky murdered his own father out of impatience. What was it, Valyn, four hundred years ago?”