Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

“So we’ll cover two miles,” Adare said. “We can stay ahead of these bastards for a couple miles.”

The words were bold, but Valyn could smell the uncertainty on her.

“No,” Kaden said. “The ak’hanath are tracking Triste. Maybe Triste and me both. That means that if we split up, Adare will have a chance to get to the Kettral while we’re here, in Kegellen’s cellar, undercover.”

“All right,” Adare said slowly. “And when I get the Kettral, what then?”

Valyn tried to figure the timing in his head. Two miles, through crowded streets. Adare was in sturdy boots, but she had nothing like the Kettral or Shin training. The whole thing ought to take about twenty minutes, but Adare was tougher than she seemed. The glare in her burning eyes said she could make the run faster, that she would make the run faster. “We count heartbeats,” he said. “One thousand heartbeats from when Adare emerges. That’s the timing. She gets to Gwenna, gives her our location. When we come out, if everything hasn’t gone straight to shit, she should be overhead, ready for the grab.”

Adare shook her head. “I thought things already had gone to shit. I thought that’s why we were fleeing through this tunnel.”

“I think you’ll look back on this tunnel fondly as soon as you’re aboveground,” Valyn said.

“You go with her,” Kaden said. “She’ll need your protection up there.”

Valyn shook his head. “Not a chance. Adare is expendable. You’re not.”

“We need her to get to the Kettral,” Kaden insisted. “There’s nothing you can do if the army catches up with us and we have no bird.”

“Of course there is,” Valyn replied. “I can kill them.”

* * *

Gwenna had spent the better part of the morning trying to figure out just what in the fine fuck was going on. The Urghul were encamped beyond the desolation Adare had made of the northern third of Annur, and though they’d arrived only the day before, the horsemen were already busy trying to clear a path through the still-smoldering rubble. Of Balendin himself, there was no sign, which was more than worrisome, but instead of flying patrols north of the wall to scout the enemy position, she and the rest of the Kettral were trying to figure out what had happened to the ’Kent-kissing Emperor.

“Valyn.” That was the Flea’s assessment. “He has the ability to do it, and the reason.”

Certainly, everything Gwenna had heard of the early-morning attack smacked of Kettral work: an ambush at a choke point, smokers and flashbangs, the Emperor gone without any of her guard spotting so much as a single soldier.… And, of course, Valyn himself was gone, missing since the night before. It all added up, except for one obvious question: If Valyn had gone rogue, slipping out of the compound to execute his sister, why wasn’t she executed yet? Where was the body?

Gwenna had had all five of her Wings scouring the city near where Adare disappeared, both on foot and in the air. So far they’d found nothing.

No, she reminded herself, staring grimly at the map that she’d unfolded across the table of her command post just inside the courtyard. Not nothing . She studied the series of black ko stones that she’d been adding to the map all morning. Each one represented a sighting by her people of Annurian soldiers, men under the command of General Van, men who should, given the Urghul threat just north of the wall, have been on that fucking wall getting ready to defend the city. The stones showed an obvious cordon, as though the legions, too, were searching for Adare. That search, however, was proceeding more methodically than Gwenna’s own, as though Van’s soldiers were privy to information that she lacked.

“What are we missing?” she muttered, staring at the map.

The Flea shook his head. Over Gwenna’s strong objections, he and Sigrid had both dragged themselves out of the infirmary. The new cloth wrapping the Wing leader’s arm was still spotted with blood, but his face didn’t look as ashen as it had the night before. The leach, too, looked better than Gwenna would have expected. Once again, her blacks were immaculately clean, her long blond hair perfectly coiffed, as though she’d been at it all morning with a fine Rabin comb.

“You use a kenning for that, don’t you?” Gwenna had demanded, squinting at the woman when she first emerged from the infirmary.

“We all have our own personal acts of discipline,” the Flea replied quietly.

Gwenna would have been a good deal happier if Sigrid had used her power to find the ’Kent-kissing Emperor instead of fixing her hair, but then, as Talal was always telling her, leaches couldn’t do everything. As the sun rose over the towers of the Dawn Palace, climbing past Intarra’s Spear itself, reaching its zenith, then dipping down toward the west, Adare was still missing, the Army of the North was still scattered over half the fucking city, and the Urghul were still massing to the north, preparing for their inevitable attack.

Gwenna glanced at the map again. “To Hull with it. The next time the birds report in, I’m sending them north. You don’t need an emperor to have a war.”

The Flea studied the deployment of the stones. “It’s hard to win a war, if you don’t know what’s going on on your side of the wall. Delka said she’d heard people whispering that il Tornja has returned to the city.”

“You’d think, if that were true, that the bastard would pay a little more attention to the horde of barbarians. He is the kenarang, after all, and defending Annur from the threat of annihilation is a fairly substantial part of his job. At the very least-”

She broke off at the sound of cries from the edge of the courtyard, searching for the source of the commotion.

“Well,” the Flea said a moment later. “That’s one question answered.”

Adare. The Emperor. She was running across the flagstones of the open square, flanked by a small knot of men who looked as ruthless as they were unkempt. Gwenna’s first thought was that they had seized her somehow, but no … they were moving in something like a guard formation, protecting her.

Gwenna left the table, broke into a jog, the Flea and Sigrid at her side. She met the other woman halfway across the square.

“Kaden,” Adare gasped. Sweat poured down her face and soaked her robe. She was desperately out of breath, hunched over and panting, but she managed to choke out the message all the same. “Triste and Valyn. Just at the corner … of the Wool District and the Flowers … where Anlatun’s old market spills over. They need … a bird.…”

It was tempting to ask why, but Adare hadn’t run herself half to death in order to play questions and guesses.

“Get her inside,” Gwenna said, turning to the Flea. “Make sure she’s all right. When the other birds come in, send them north, high, scouting the Urghul-we need to start getting ready for that fight. Jak, ” she shouted, breaking away from Adare, racing across the courtyard to where Allar’ra waited in the shadow of the wall. “Get us in the air.”

Talal and Annick had been on top of Adare’s tower, watching the Urghul deploy. They had a clear line of sight, however, from there back into the courtyard, and by the time Gwenna reached Jak and the bird, they were already running across the cobblestones at a full sprint, the sniper with her bow in one hand. It couldn’t have taken more than a hundred heartbeats from the moment Adare arrived until they were flying, but all the time Gwenna felt her stomach twisting.

Too slow, she thought, shaking her head as they climbed above the slate and copper rooftops, remembering Adare’s exhaustion, her desperation. What if we’re too slow?