The Last Mortal Bond (25 page)

“Matol was the commander,” Kaden said slowly, rehearsing his own beliefs, as though to speak a thing were to make it true. “Triste destroyed him with the
kenta
.”

Kiel shook his head. “Matol was only a lieutenant, one who had been left in charge a long time, many years—but still just a lieutenant. There was another man they spoke of: Horm. I never met him.”

Kaden ransacked his memory, sorting through the conversations. Tan had never mentioned the name, nor had Matol, but it was there, lodged in the back of his mind, recollected from an offhand remark of one of his jailors:
Rampuri Tan was a Hunter. Almost as tough as Bloody Horm, least in some ways.
In the moment, Kaden had been too curious about Tan's past to ask anything more about the man to whom he was compared, and there had been no reason to revisit the comment later. The Dead Heart had been filled with hard men, and he'd had no intention of getting to know them all.

“So Horm was on the steppe,” Kaden said slowly, the stones of his thought locking into place. “He was Ishien pretending to be Urghul, pretending to be Long Fist.”

Kiel shook his head. “Not quite. Long Fist, that physical body,
is
Urghul—he has the skin, the eyes, the hair. It's hard to say when Meshkent inhabited that body—probably when Long Fist was still on the steppe, maybe after he'd joined the Ishien—but the Ishien piece is crucial.” Oddly, he smiled. “I should have seen it so much earlier.”

“You said you never even met Horm.”

“It is hardly an excuse. The pattern was there.”

Kaden frowned. “So Meshkent inhabited Long Fist, united the Urghul…”

Kiel shook his head. “No. His triumphant return to the steppe would have happened
after
he joined the Ishien, perhaps long after. The Ishien do this sort of thing all the time—take on new identities, worm their way into communities all over Vash and Eridroa, often for years. For decades.”

“It's how they hunt you.”

The Csestriim nodded. “They wouldn't find many of my kind if they never left the Dead Heart. To do that, they need to go out, to blend in, or in Long Fist's case, to return.”

“Then why take the detour in the first place? Meshkent wants to destroy Annur, but the Ishien don't
care
about Annur. They don't care about anything except the extermination of your race.”

“Your thinking is too linear,” Kiel said. “Not every scheme leads directly to its goal.”

Kaden's thinking felt anything but linear. His mind tumbled end over end, tossed like a stick in a turbulent stream. With an effort, he slowed that stream, tried to find an eddy where he could rest, take stock.

“The gates,” Kaden said after a long pause. “Meshkent knew that to defeat Annur, he'd need to fight on more than one front, and to do that, he needed access to the gates.”

“Indeed,” Kiel replied. “Even with the full might of the Urghul behind him, Long Fist is unable to force his way past il Tornja and the Army of the North. He is winning because he's fighting on the other fronts. The pirates and rebellions, the proliferation of banditry and violence down in the Waist—it is a more subtle war than the one being waged in the north, but it is war all the same.”

“And it is destroying us,” Kaden breathed.

He felt, suddenly, like one of the raptors in the imperial mews. The birds were kept hooded when they weren't flying, and with a flick of his mind, he could imagine one of the creatures chafing against the constraints of the hood, eager to be free of the leather, believing that the hood was the whole prison. And then, to have the hood pulled off, to see that it had been the least of the constraints, to find the thick jesses wrapping the talons, to comprehend the bars of the cage, and beyond those bars, the implacable walls, and to find, nowhere in the deep rustle and gloom of the awful, man-made mews, any sign of the sky.

All this time, Kaden had known they were failing. He just hadn't seen how badly.

“And there may be another reason,” Kiel went on, oblivious to Kaden's silence. “If Meshkent suspects that a Csestriim sits at the heart of Annurian power, he will have been wise to ally himself with the Hunters of Csestriim.”

“Could he?” Kaden asked. “Could he know that?”

Meshkent was a god, after all. It suddenly seemed possible that he knew
everything
.

Kiel said nothing for a long time. He didn't move. Finally he met Kaden's eyes. “I cannot say. The gods are not omniscient, but what they know … or how they know it … is beyond me.”

Inside the darkness of his own mind, Kaden studied the cold caverns of the Dead Heart, tried to imagine a god cloaked in a man's flesh walking those chill halls, eating the same soft white fish year after year, living among men whose minds were broken by the rituals they set themselves.

“And he likes it,” Kaden said softly.

Kiel raised his brows.

“Meshkent,” Kaden went on. “Long Fist. Bloody Horm. Whatever he calls himself, he might have joined the Ishien in order to use the gates, to get at the Csestriim, but he also
likes
it there. The Dead Heart—it is a temple to suffering.”

The Csestriim nodded slowly. “So it is.”

Kaden watched the historian for a moment, then looked out past the ironglass at the city of Annur stretched out below. The crescent moon, sharp as a blade, was buried in the rooftops to the west. The night was dark, and about to get darker.

“I have to go there,” he said quietly. A part of him quailed at the words, but he found the fear, crushed it out. “I have to go back to the Dead Heart.”

Kiel studied him. “You hope to find him. Meshkent.”

“I need to,” Kaden said. “I can't win against il Tornja. We brought Adare here hoping she might tell us his weaknesses, maybe even help us kill him.…” He shook his head wearily. “And now we know we can't trust her, that she's lying to us. For all we know, she's here to do il Tornja's work, whatever that is. At every step, he has outmaneuvered us. We destroyed the empire, and it didn't even
matter
. Not in the real fight.”

“Don't be too certain,” Kiel said. “If il Tornja had the strength of a unified Annur behind him, he might have destroyed Meshkent already. If you didn't control the Dawn Palace, he could have already come for Triste. For Ciena.”

“We managed a delay,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “Nothing more. Il Tornja
knew
about Long Fist, knew the Urghul chieftain was also the god. Meshkent isn't the only one fighting the war on several fronts, and worse, he might not even be aware of the danger he is in. He thinks he's fighting for Annur, but il Tornja doesn't
care
about Annur. All of this,” Kaden gestured to the city, to the dark fields slumbering beyond, “is just a set of stones to be played, to be sacrificed if necessary.”

“Ran il Tornja is quick,” Kiel said, “and bright. But Meshkent is a god. He has played his own stones well.”

“But he's playing the wrong game. He's trying to control the board, to wrest back control of Vash and Eridroa, to reinstate his own bloody worship. Il Tornja doesn't care about the board. His victory hangs on the capture of just two stones: Triste and Long Fist. I can't help Triste any more than I have. She is as safe as I can make her, and more, she is
here,
inside the Spear, where she needs to be. There's nothing else I can do for her, but I can warn Long Fist. I can try to bring him here, too.”

“To the Spear.”

Kaden nodded. “Where else?”

Kiel watched him for a while, or seemed to watch him. Kaden had the impression that the Csestriim was actually looking past him or through him, at some truth more crucial and abstract.

“Long Fist is not like Triste,” he said finally.

“They're both gods,” Kaden replied.

“No,” Kiel replied, shaking his head. “Triste as you know her is a young woman with a goddess trapped inside her mind. Meshkent is not trapped. He wears Long Fist as you would wear a monk's robe. He is in control, fully in control.”

“That's why I need to talk to him. He can help.…”

“Why would he help?”

Kaden blinked. “Il Tornja is trying to kill Ciena, trying to kill
him
. We are trying to stop il Tornja. That puts all of us on the same side. At least as far as this fight goes, that makes us allies.”

“You assume the god believes he needs an ally. You assume that he wants one. Do not forget, Kaden, that Meshkent came to this earth, took on this human flesh, to destroy Annur, to tear down everything your progenitors worked so hard to build.”

“According to Adare, it was il Tornja who built Annur. The Malkeenians were just … puppets.”

“And it is generally the puppets who pay the heaviest price. Meshkent may not know about il Tornja's involvement in your empire. And if he does know, he may not care. You are no longer Emperor, but you are still First Speaker of Annur, of the Annurian Republic. He has every reason to kill you. This notion of an alliance is a shield of glass. It will cut you when it shatters.”

Kaden shook his head slowly. “You're wrong. My shield is not the alliance. It is my uselessness.”

Kiel regarded him silently, waiting.

“I have failed here in Annur,” Kaden went on, voice level as he faced the ugly fact. “The republic is a shambles. I could hardly have done more to help Meshkent if I had set out to support him from the very beginning.”

“He may eliminate you nonetheless. He may kill you to simplify the battle, for no other reason.”

“And if he kills me,” Kaden asked quietly, “is that such a great loss to our cause? I have none of your understanding of history. None of Gabril's knifework. None of Kegellen's unnumbered underground army.”

“You have Intarra's eyes.”

“So does Adare, and she's the one sitting on the throne.” Kaden smiled. The expression felt strange on his face. “I can go to Meshkent, I can die, if necessary, because I do not matter here.”

Kiel spread his hands. “If you want someone who truly does not matter, send a servant. Send a slave.”

“No,” Kaden said, shaking his head slowly. “A slave cannot travel the necessary paths.”

The Csestriim studied him with those empty eyes. “The
kenta
.”

Kaden nodded silently.

“The Ishien control the gates,” Kiel observed. “All of them. When you step through onto the island they will kill you before you say three words.”

“Then I'll have to say what needs saying in two.”

 

14

“There are two problems with recalling il Tornja to the city,” Adare said, shaking her head. “First, if we bring him here, there won't be anyone to fight the Urghul.”

She gestured to the ruined map below, as though it were possible to descry the movement of horsemen hundreds of miles away in the cinder and soft ash left behind when the tiny false forests of the Thousand Lakes burned. The council had abandoned the entire chamber after Adare's demonstration. She could hardly blame them. The place reeked of oil and char, half the lamps were shattered, shards of glass still littered the table, the catwalks, the chairs. Servants had come to clean it almost immediately, summoned by some unheard command. Adare had sent them away. She would see the map restored when she had restored Annur itself. In the meantime, the ruined hall provided a space where she could meet with Kaden and Kiel without interference from the rest of the council.

“There are other generals in the world,” Kaden pointed out. “Warriors other than il Tornja who might fight the Urghul.”

Adare looked up from the map to study her brother. He stood just a few feet away, almost close enough to touch, but everything about him—his posture, his gaze, that perfectly empty face—whispered of distance. There was no warmth to him. No human movement. Adare might have been watching him through a long lens while he stood alone on a far, far peak. Whatever rapprochement she had imagined or hoped might arise between them had vanished. The simple fact that he had insisted on bringing Kiel, the Csestriim, was evidence enough of that. Adare swallowed, unsure if the bitter taste on the back of her tongue was doubt or regret, then shook her head.

“There are no generals like il Tornja. The Urghul would have overrun us months ago if anyone else had been in command. They would have destroyed us in the very first battle.”

“Annur was still divided then. We've healed that rift.…”

“Have we?” Adare arched an eyebrow. “The council might be willing to let me perch atop the throne, but it seems pretty clear, based on that last meeting, that perching is about the extent of my imperial powers.”

“The point is,” Kaden said, “that with our armies allied, we have greater resources to fight the Urghul. You can recall il Tornja without scuttling the northern campaign.”

“You can recall him,” Kiel said, voice soft as a leather sole scuffing stone. “He will not come.”

Adare nodded curtly. “That was my second point.”

She let the silence stretch as she considered the historian, trying to read him. She had expected someone like il Tornja—strong, confident, insouciant—but of course, that was all an act, a mask her general wore to make him appear human. There was no reason that Kiel should have chosen the same one.

According to Kaden, Kiel was older than the
kenarang,
older by thousands of years, although what such a difference meant among the Csestriim, she didn't care to guess. He certainly
looked
older. Partly it was the historian's manner—unlike il Tornja, Kiel moved and spoke deliberately, almost cautiously, and Adare associated such caution with age. Kiel had also been a prisoner for a very long time, and the marks remained—a nose and jaw broken over and over, a limp, hands shattered then poorly healed, fingers twisted as twigs. If il Tornja seemed too young and cocksure to be Csestriim, Kiel appeared too bent, too broken.