Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

Kaden stared at his brother.

“And just what the fuck,” Adare asked quietly, “do you think is inside us?”

“I have no idea,” Valyn replied, “but I’ll tell you this: whatever it is, it doesn’t quit. It might be ugly, backstabbing, stubborn, but no one-not the Kettral or the Skullsworn, the Csestriim or the slarn or whole armies of Urghul-has been able to kill it yet.”

Adare’s mouth had just quirked into a ragged smile when the door to the wine cellar slammed open. Kegellen stood in the doorway. Valyn’s axes were out of his belt before Kaden could blink. He crossed the floor in two strides, to lay a sharp edge against the woman’s neck. The Queen of the Streets’ broad chest was heaving, but her eyes were hard.

“Don’t waste your steel on me, soldier,” she said.

“What’s going on?” Adare demanded.

“The Army of the North is here.”

“They’ve been here for days,” Adare replied.

“I’m not talking about the city,” Kegellen said. “They are here in this house. Now. And they are coming for you.”

The basement of Kegellen’s manse wasn’t so much a basement as a labyrinth of intersecting corridors, stairwells, and storage chambers, stretching out beneath the streets above like the roots of some vast, ancient tree. Clearly, the walled estate visible from the street was only the barest fraction of a much larger, subterranean compound: part fortress, part storehouse, part hidden passage for all manner of illicit goods. Valyn caught glimpses, as the Queen of the Streets hustled them through the maze, of rooms piled high with unlabeled crates, bolts of cloth, huge clay amphorae standing patiently as soldiers in the gloom. Steel gates blocked the largest of the intersections, each one thick as a castle portcullis and guarded by a handful of men. Kegellen’s toughs were an ugly lot-long on scars and short on teeth-but they seemed to know how to handle their steel, and they leapt into motion-uncoiling chains, hauling at the bars-the moment the huge woman swept into view.

“How did they know?” Triste asked, after yet another gate had clanged shut behind them. “How did the army know we were here?”

“I don’t know,” Kegellen replied tersely. Wrapped in a dress of exquisite red silk, her fingers flashing with rings, the flesh of her neck wobbling as she moved, the woman didn’t look like a soldier. She would have been as out of place on the Islands as some doe-eyed priestess of Eira, and yet there was something about her voice, about the way she carried herself, something about her conviction and determination as she guided them through the narrow passages, that reminded Valyn of his Kettral trainers. She was dangerous, this one, despite all appearances. The only question was, dangerous to whom ?

“You could have been followed,” Kegellen continued.

Valyn shook his head curtly. “We weren’t.”

“Then you could have been spotted when you arrived. Even the back entrance is watched, although I’ll admit I didn’t realize the army had taken an interest in my humble home.”

Adare glanced back the way they had come, as though she expected to find soldiers racing down the corridor after them. “Our faces were hidden,” she said. “Both of them.”

Kegellen shrugged and kept moving. “It matters less how they knew than what they will do next.”

Valyn took a deep breath, sifting the scents of moldy stone and fine perfume, confusion and fear. He could smell the urgency on Kegellen, the bright tang of her haste, but there seemed to be no deceit. If she was lying, she knew how to hide it even from his senses, and besides, if the woman’s goal was to hand them over to the Army of the North, she could have done so without warning them, without the whole charade of escaping through the corridors.

“Il Tornja,” Kaden said. “He’s here. This is his work.”

Valyn turned to stare at his brother. The others were obviously frightened by the mention of the kenarang, but it seemed like a long time since he himself had felt frightened. Instead, he felt … eager. If Kaden was right, if Ran il Tornja was in the city somehow, it meant another chance, a final opportunity to put right what had gone wrong on that tower in Andt-Kyl all those months ago.

“That’s impossible,” Adare objected. “You said il Tornja was in the Ancaz … what? A week ago? A little more? Unless he used the-”

Kaden shook his head, cutting her off. “He didn’t. The kenta are too risky for him. He can’t bring his soldiers through the gates, which means he would have to travel alone, and it’s too easy for the Ishien to guard the island hubs. Too easy for them to set an ambush.”

“I thought the Ishien were dead,” Adare protested. “That he killed them.”

“Not all of them. It only takes one man with a flatbow to guard the whole island.”

Kegellen reeked of curiosity, but she kept quiet, letting them talk as she swept along ahead.

“The leach,” Triste suggested. “Maybe the leach helped him get back.”

Valyn frowned, considering the map inside his mind. “No one saw him during the days you were at Rassambur.”

Kaden shook his head. “It’s possible he left for Annur the moment Pyrre rescued us.”

“Why?” Triste demanded. “Why would he do that? How would he know?”

“The same way he’s known everything else,” Adare said bleakly. “The same way he knew the moment you escaped from the Spear. The same way he knew where to find you.” She stared into the darkness as they moved down the corridor, as though waiting for the kenarang himself to step from the shadows. “He’s been playing this game a long time, and he’s better at it than we are.”

“He knows where we have to go to perform the obviate, ” Kaden said. “And he has the ak’hanath .”

Adare nodded. “The one thing brings him to Annur, the second to Kegellen’s mansion.”

As they spoke, Valyn traced the path on his mental map, calculating the various rates of travel. “He’s only on foot from the Ancaz to Mo’ir. From there, all the travel is on river, lake, and canal. He can keep moving all day, all night, and the current’s in his favor. He could be here by now. Him and the leach and those ’Kent-kissing ak’hanath .”

A grim silence settled over them as they walked. Valyn had lost all sense of direction in the twisting corridors, but Kegellen continued to forge ahead, choosing a path at every fork without pausing to think.

“They will have a difficult time following,” she pointed out. “My basement is … complex, even without the gates and the guards.”

“They’re not following,” Kaden replied. “Not all of them, at least.” He pointed up at the vaulted ceiling of the stone corridor. “Most of them will be up there, on the streets, tracking us.”

Kegellen raised an eyebrow. “That would be impressive. And inconvenient.”

“Where will this let us out?” Adare asked.

“We’ve been moving east, toward your command center on the wall. The tunnels won’t get anywhere close to all the way there, but they’ll get us clear of whatever cordon the army set up around my home.”

“We need to get to the Spear,” Kaden said.

Adare shook her head. “No good. I already told you-it’s packed with il Tornja’s soldiers. Has been since they showed up in the city days ago.”

“Kettral,” Valyn said. “We get a bird to fly us to the top.”

Kaden nodded. “Good.”

“Where are the Kettral?” Kegellen asked.

“In a square just south of the wall,” Valyn replied.

“That’s unfortunate,” the woman said. “You’ll need to cover at least two miles in the streets above.”