Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

“What does that mean?”

“There is a ceremony to perform. Words to speak.” Kaden paused, forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes as he said the rest. “And then we have to die.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Valyn’s face twisted with something that might have been rage or confusion. As though something human were trying to tear itself free of the bestial fury in which he had fought his way across the city. For a fraction of a second, there was confusion there, confusion and grief and anger. Then it was all gone, the emotion wiped away like so much blood-something messy, unnecessary once it had been spilled.

“What’s the other way?” Valyn asked.

Kaden shook his head. He hadn’t explained this part back in Kegellen’s manse. There had been no reason, and he could find no words. “There is no other way. Humanity depends on Ciena and Meshkent. No one will be safe until they are free, and they can’t be free while we are still alive.”

“How in Hull’s name did the bastard get inside you ?” Valyn growled.

“I told you already. I let him in.”

“So let him out.”

“This is the only way.”

“Well, we’ll find another way,” Valyn growled. “We’re safe here. We’ve got time. We-”

He broke off mid-sentence, cocked his head to the side, then closed his eyes as though listening to something. Kaden watched his jaw tighten. Valyn half raised one of the axes, as though he were about to attack Kaden himself.

“No,” he said, dragging the word out in a long, quiet growl. Then again, “No.”

“What is it?” Kaden asked, though he could already see the bleak contours of the answer.

Valyn’s eyes opened. His face was blank, awful.

“They’re above us.”

Triste stumbled to her feet. “Who is?”

“Ran il Tornja.”

“Alone?” the Flea asked. He didn’t look down, didn’t raise his blades, didn’t move at all. It was as though he were getting ready, wringing out every last moment of rest, savoring a final stillness, preparing for whatever had to come next.

“No,” Valyn replied grimly. “There are at least fifty men with him.”

“How do you know?” Kaden demanded.

“I can smell him. Them.”

Fear surged like a fire inside Kaden. He wrapped it in a fist, crushed it out. There was no time for fear. He leaned out over the railing of the stairs, craned his neck to look up.

“We’re maybe three hundred feet from the top.”

Valyn nodded. “They’re coming down.”

“Can you hold them?”

The Flea shook his head. “Not for long. They have the high ground.”

“And a leach,” Valyn said.

Sigrid’s head snapped around at that. Valyn nodded.

“He almost knocked Gwenna’s bird out of the air. I thought he was down in the streets somewhere. I was wrong.”

Sigrid bared her teeth, made a vicious sound somewhere deep in her throat, and abandoned her post below them, climbing the stairs until she stood shoulder to shoulder with the Flea. Her blacks were a spray-spatter of gore: blood, and brain, and chips of bone. Sweat-streaked char smudged her face. She closed her eyes, put a hand on the Flea’s shoulder, and then, as Kaden stared, the grime lifted away from her clothes, her face, her arms, rising clear of her, then sliding aside, hanging in the air a moment like a shadow, then collapsing, blown away on the hot wind. The woman was immaculate, radiant, as though she’d just stepped from a day in the baths. Even her hair fell in graceful waves around her face. Her eyes, however, might have been chips of ice.

The Flea looked over at her, then chuckled. “You always did say you wanted to die looking good. Well, I’ll tell you, Sig, you’re stunning.”

Triste ignored the woman. She was pacing around the narrow landing like a trapped animal. “We’ll do it here,” she said finally. “We’ll do it here.” She turned to the Kettral. “If you keep them back, we’ll do it here. The obviate .” Then she faced Kaden. “You know how, don’t you. He told you.”

Before he could respond, she crossed to him, took his hand in her own, then squeezed it gently.

Kaden met her eyes, held them, then nodded.

“Are we high enough?” Valyn asked roughly. “You said the top of the Spear.”

“I don’t know,” Kaden replied quietly. “But we’re as high as we’re likely to get.”

“I hear them now,” the Flea said. The Kettral commander turned to Sigrid. His voice was soft, but Kaden could hear it clearly enough. “What do you need from me?”

The woman met his eyes, then reached out to take both of his shoulders in her hands. She made no effort to speak.

“Do it,” the Flea said.

She didn’t move.

“Do it,” he said again. “I’m ready.”

She didn’t move.

“I’ve been ready since he died, Sig.” His voice was quiet, gentle. “Do it.”

Then, the movement so fast that Kaden almost couldn’t follow it, the woman slid a knife from her belt and slammed it into the man’s side. He stiffened with the blow, almost fell, then steadied himself.

“What…,” Triste said, lunging forward despite herself.

Kaden held her back, his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders. He could feel her heart slamming in her chest.

“Her well,” Valyn said grimly. “It’s pain. He’s giving her the strength to fight il Tornja’s leach.” He exhaled slowly. “And I’ll do the same.”

“No,” the Flea ground out, his voice on the verge of snapping. “You need to fight … shield her while … she works.”

Valyn gritted his teeth, but even Kaden could hear the footsteps now, dozens of boots pounding down the stairs from above.

Sigrid drew another knife from her belt, more slowly this time, then drove this one, too, into the Flea’s flesh. He dropped to his knees. Dead, Kaden thought, then paused, made himself really look at the wounds, at the angle of the steel where it entered the skin. They were savage, cruel, almost too painful to contemplate, but they weren’t fatal. And slowly the Flea rose, met the leach’s eyes, and made an animal noise. No, Kaden thought. Not a noise. It was a word: Another .

And so a third time the blond woman buried a blade in her commander’s flesh, a third time he dropped, and a third time he rose slowly to his feet.

“Is it enough?” he whispered.

Sigrid watched him a moment, then took him by the shoulders, leaning over to kiss his blood-smeared forehead with those perfect lips. She nodded, and they both turned toward the stairs, to hold at bay whatever was descending from above.

“We have to do it, Kaden,” Triste said finally, roughly, breaking him free of what felt like an awful dream. “We have to do it now.”

Kaden nodded. It seemed impossible that after all the running, all the fighting and climbing, all the fire and dying, it should come down to this. A whole life, whittled to a few final instants. Slowly, his legs trembling with the strain, he knelt on the narrow landing. Triste knelt beside him.

“How do we…?” she asked.

“Close your eyes,” he replied. Men were shouting above them, pounding down the stairs. Kaden ignored the sound.

“Wait!” Triste said, clutching his face in her hands.

Kaden shook his head. “There’s no time, Triste. If we had a year or ten years, there wouldn’t be time.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to say it.”

Tears poured down her face. All over again, he saw her as he’d seen her that first night in Ashk’lan, the same violet eyes, the same perfect face, the same fear.…

No, he thought, gazing at her. Not the same at all. Her face was scarred now, and her eyes … there was fear in her eyes, but this time, it wasn’t a fear of him. This time, when she reached out to touch him, there was none of the frenzied desperation he remembered from that night in his tent, none of the mad, animal haste.