Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

The Flea nodded. “A good spot. Close to the fight. Plenty of room for simultaneous landings.”

“There’s a bigger square a little to the west,” Gwenna replied, “but this one’s close to the Emperor’s own command post.” She pointed north toward a blocky tower rising above the wall a hundred paces away. “Figured it was worth trying to consolidate the command.” She glanced over to where two soldiers were carrying Newt toward one of the buildings. “Enough bullshitting about the logistics. Your Wing needs medical care, better care than we could give you in the field.”

“See to Newt and Sigrid,” the Flea began. “I’m fine.…”

“Horseshit,” Gwenna snapped. “You’re bleeding through your bandages while we stand here.”

“I know what this body can take, Gwenna. I’ve been fighting in it a long time.”

“And I need you to keep fighting in it. We’re not losing the best fucking soldier we’ve got to a case of his own stubbornness. You are going to the infirmary if I have to tie you up and kick you all the way there.”

The Kettral close enough to hear the outburst turned, tried to watch the conflict unnoticed as they went about their work. They knew the Flea. Washouts or not, everyone knew the Flea, and this was not the way people talked to the Flea. Valyn himself took a step back. After a pause, however, the older man just chuckled.

“I won’t say no to a bed and a few hours’ rest. Just make sure you don’t let me sleep through the war.”

Gwenna grunted. “Don’t you worry about that. When the war gets here, I’m planning to hide behind you the entire time.” She turned to glare at Valyn. “You, too . The fuck’s wrong with you people? Get to the infirmary and put your heads on the ’Kent-kissing pillows. ”

Only when Valyn and the Flea had almost reached the building did Gwenna finally turn, barking orders at the Kettral who still remained in the square.

“Never should have put her in charge of Andt-Kyl,” the Flea murmured, shaking his head with mock regret. “Now, anytime there’s a city to defend, she acts like she runs the place.”

Valyn just nodded.

Gwenna was a different woman from the headstrong cadet he remembered; there was no doubt about that. The old fire was still there, hot as ever, but she’d found a way to harness it. Back on the Islands she’d been almost out of control half the time, a danger to herself and everyone around her. Not anymore. She was still dangerous, more dangerous-that much was obvious just from the way she held herself, from the steel in her voice-but she’d found a way to hammer her anger into a blade, one that she could hold, wield, master.

It’s what was supposed to happen to all of us, he realized.

When they fled the Islands, every member of his Wing had been raw, green, and unready. Battle and blood had changed them, changed Valyn himself most of all, but where Gwenna and Talal and Annick had grown into proper Kettral, disciplined, driven, allied in their shared mission, and bound, too, by a deeper, human bond, Valyn had become a solitary creature, a thing of the shadows, hungry for blood, violence, annihilation.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Gwenna was helping tend to the birds. She was arguing with Annick about something while the two of them rolled a huge barrel of feed away from the wall, then started prying off the top. The other Kettral had gathered around, trading barbs as they worked. Valyn hesitated, waited for the Flea to enter the infirmary before turning to stare at the scene. For a long time, he stood alone in the shadows, just watching, listening. It was nothing special, just a bunch of weary soldiers going about their work, but he felt, standing there in the starlight, as though he were gazing across an unbridgeable gulf into a different life, one he should have lived, could have lived, if only he had not made so many mistakes.

For a moment there, he almost stepped back into the square, almost walked back across the open space to join them. There was always work for another pair of hands, always another job to do. He could throw his shoulder behind a barrel or check over a bird’s jesses. Learn the names of the new folks. Trade stories of the past year with Talal …

He shook his head. His own stories were all darkness and death. Now that he could see again, he saw the way people looked at him: warily, one hand always on a weapon when he came near. The Kettral were just a few dozen paces away. All that separated him from them were wide-open flagstones, empty air. Men and women had walked across that square every day for decades, centuries, going about the bright, boring business of their lives-buying bread, running errands, hauling water-things a child could do. For Valyn, though, there was no way across.

Talal glanced up, found him watching, but Valyn looked away, shifting his eyes from the square to the tower looming above. The Emperor’s command post. Where Adare came every day to oversee her city’s preparations. He’d said he would wait until the war was over, but then, he’d said a lot of things.

* * *

The Emperor’s guard was heavier than Valyn had expected. They were in Annur, after all, in her own city, safe behind the walls, the Urghul still at least a day away. He’d expected a couple pairs of Aedolians, maybe six men total. Instead, a dozen soldiers armored in the steel and bronze of the Sons of Flame flanked her as she made her way down the street, riding, as Gwenna said she did each day, from the Dawn Palace to her tower on the wall.

Kill them, whispered a voice inside his head.

He could do it-twelve men, taken by surprise, their only training whatever drills their priestly commanders had cobbled together over the years-he could take them apart one limb at a time, leave the bodies scattered across the road. He started to lift an ax from his belt, then shook his head, settling it back in place. Though a part of him hungered to wade into the block of guardsmen, there was a chance Adare might escape in the chaos. Or worse, that she might die. Valyn had every intention of killing her, of course, but he needed to talk to her first, to learn what she’d done with Kaden, whether his brother was still alive, rotting in a cell somewhere, or already dead. Besides, now that he was back with the Kettral, there was another way, a more elegant way. He shifted his hand from the ax to the munitions he’d lifted from Gwenna’s stores: one smoker, one flash bang-more than enough to kindle the necessary madness.

The whole thing took less than twenty heartbeats. He lit both charges at the same time, tossed them into the midst of the horses, waited a moment for the choking clouds of smoke to fill the narrow street, took a deep breath of clean air, then stepped into the swirling haze. All over again, he was blind. Even his preternatural sight was no good in the smoke, but that didn’t matter. He’d learned, in his long year of darkness, to listen, to frame the world around him from the sounds it made. There, to his left, a pawing horse. To his right, the scrape of steel against leather. He ducked under one man’s blind, stumbling attack, stepped past a panicking horse, and then he was there at the heart of the entourage. He could smell his sister, her soap and her choked-back fear. He could hear her lean heart pounding.

He gained the saddle with a single leap, landed behind her, yanked the black bag down over her head, then kneed the horse forward, out of the blind melee. Adare twisted, tried to scream, tried to slide a hand up beneath the bag, to pull it off. It snagged on her crossed hairpins, however, and a moment later he clamped a hand down over the fabric and her mouth beneath, slid a knife from his belt and held it against her side, at just the spot between the ribs where she’d stabbed him so many months earlier.