Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (56 page)

The final chapter of Hendran’s
Tactics
sprang to mind:
Plan all you like, but remember: war is chaos, and at some point every soldier has to throw the dice.
The old Wing commander must have had something figured out—he had supposedly died in his bed at the age of eighty-four.
Of course, no one was trying to scrub his whole ’Shael-spawned family off the face of the earth.
It didn’t matter. If Valyn didn’t solve some of the mysteries confronting him, he would live and die a prisoner on the island where he had trained for life as a soldier, sitting impotently by as some shadowy cabal killed first his brother, then his sister, and then, if they still thought he was important enough to bother with, Valyn himself. His Wing would probably die with him—a thought that had not crossed his mind before. Anyone thorough enough to plan the assassination of the Malkeenian line wouldn’t flinch at a few extra bodies, especially if those bodies might have known things they shouldn’t have. Talal and Annick, Gwenna and Laith, they were all in danger just because Eyrie Command had assigned them to his Wing. They were in mortal danger, and they didn’t even know the facts.

“I think Amie’s murderer
was
Kettral,” Valyn said at last. “And I think the same person captured Lin in the middle of the Trial—captured her, then killed her.”

For a while they just stared at him, Laith and Gwenna incredulous, Talal confused, Annick unreadable.

“It was the slarn,” Laith said. “You saw her wounds yourself. After you carried her out.”

“Something’s got all twisted here,” Gwenna agreed, “but Ha Lin died an honest death down there, a soldier’s death.”

“The slarn may have landed some of those blows,” Valyn agreed, trying to keep a rein on his anger, “but most of the slashes were made by good steel. Not just that: there were marks on her wrists, impressions from a rope.”

“A rope?” Talal asked. “Like she’d been bound?”

Valyn nodded grimly. “With Liran cord—you know that tight pattern. It’s different from what you find in any other kind of rope.”

“What does it have to do with Amie?” Annick asked, her voice tight.

“Amie was strung up with the same sort of cord. Ha Lin and I found her. We cut her down. It was one of the things that made us think her killer was Kettral.”

The conversation faltered as everyone tried to make sense of the new information, staring into the lantern on the table as though the flicker of the inconstant light held some sort of answer.

“Other people have access to Liran cord,” Laith pointed out after a while.

“Not that many,” Gwenna said. “Your standard dockyard thug isn’t going to waste something like that just to tie up a whore.” As the word left her lips, she seemed to realize her audience. She glanced over at Annick, and a flush rose to her cheeks. “I’m just saying,” she bulled ahead, “that Valyn’s right. It’s strange.”

“About Lin,” Talal pressed, shaking his head in dismay. “Are you sure about the marks? We were all so beat up after the Trial—” He gestured to his arms, his face. “I had dozens of cuts, scrapes, gashes.”

“Not to mention a slarn bite to the arm,” Laith agreed. “It was brutal down there. Lin was good, better than good, but any one of us, with a little bad luck…” He grimaced. “It could have happened, Val. It could have been just the slarn.”

“It could have,” Valyn replied, keeping his voice level, “but it wasn’t. I saw plenty of slarn wounds after the Trial, and I saw the slices on Lin’s body. They were different. I looked at her wrists just before they burned her, both wrists. Maybe it’s just a freak coincidence that Amie had the same marks, but we know one thing for sure: Only cadets went down in the Hole. One of the cadets killed Ha Lin, and I’d wager both my blades against a bucket of piss that whoever killed her killed Amie as well.”

“Holy Hull,” Laith muttered. “One of our own fucking cadets. Who?”

“I don’t know,” Valyn replied, “but there’s more.”

Once he’d told them the truth about Lin’s death, it only made sense to plunge into the whole thing, the Aedolian on the boat, the plot against him, everything. They stared, eyes filled with the lamplight, features fading in and out of the shadows as he spun the tale. It was impossible to believe, even as he told it. He half expected them to laugh when it was through. They didn’t laugh. Even Laith didn’t crack a joke.

“And that’s why you wanted me to look at Manker’s,” Gwenna said, slapping the table with her palm. “You weren’t just playing the paranoid prince. Someone actually was trying to kill you.”

“Manker’s?” Talal asked. Valyn had never seen the leach over on Hook. It was possible he never even heard about the collapse.

“An alehouse,” Annick replied.

“A shithole,” Laith amended, “but one I was fond of.”

“The Aedolian’s warning is what made me wonder about Manker’s,” Valyn agreed. “It was also what made me suspect Annick of trying to drown me during the sinking test, that and the strange knot she tied.”

“A double bowline,” the sniper said. “I told you before.” Her blue eyes bored into him, cold and defiant.

“So let’s get this straight,” Gwenna said, shaking her head. “Some poor bastard on a ship tells you the Kettral are trying to kill you. Then Manker’s collapses. Then it seems like Annick tries to drown you. Then Annick shoots you in the shoulder.”

“Annick shows up a lot in this story,” Laith added. “I’ll bet you were thrilled to have her on your Wing.”

“I didn’t try to kill him,” she said flatly.

“I’m not saying you did,” Laith replied, holding up both hands. “But someone’s doing a ’Kent-kissing good job of making it look that way.”

“Yurl,” Valyn growled. “It’s got to be Yurl. Let’s not forget he’s the reason we’re boxed up in here without a blade or a bow between us.”

“Yurl’s a pox-ridden asshole,” Laith replied, “but this seems a little over that pretty boy head of his.”

Talal frowned. “He
is
the one who told Shaleel about Annick and Amie. Maybe he wants to take us out of play for a while.”

“We’re out of play, all right,” Valyn agreed. “But it still doesn’t make sense. What do Ha Lin and Amie have to do with everything else, with the Aedolian, with the whole ’Kent-kissing plot?”

“Manker’s,” Annick replied flatly. “That’s the link.”

Valyn blew out a long, frustrated breath. “The place collapsed at the same time Amie was murdered, but that’s not much of a link. You said it already—the garret where we found her was on the other side of the bay.”

“You’ve almost died how many times now?” Gwenna asked irritably.

Valyn considered. “Manker’s. Drowning. Sniper contest.” He shrugged. “Four if you count the Trial itself.”

“All right,” Talal began, picking up the thread. “There’s the connection—two of the times women were attacked and killed. The first time, Amie. The last, Ha Lin.”

“The problem with fifty percent,” Laith observed, “is that it’s fifty percent.”

A shiver run up Valyn’s spine. “Seventy-five,” he said grimly.

Even after revealing everything else, he had planned to keep Lin’s beating a secret. It was foolish, irrational. She was dead and burned; telling the tale wasn’t a betrayal and the revelation couldn’t injure her pride any further. Still, the attack on the bluffs had shamed her, shamed her to the core, and he felt as though sharing the story would somehow violate a trust they had shared, would strip her secrets bare for everyone to stare at. Besides, it hadn’t seemed relevant until they started hashing through the connections.

“Yurl and Balendin attacked Ha Lin during the sniper trial, the one where Annick shot me. They lied to her, tricked her, then held her down, beat her bloody, tried to break her. That’s where she got those wounds before the Trial—not in some training exercise the way she claimed. They said it was payback for her willingness to take them on in the arena.”

Four pairs of eyes swiveled to him. “Those whoreson shit-licking
bastards,
” Gwenna swore, flexing and unflexing her hand as though itching for a sword.

“Where?” Annick asked, her voice calm, hard.

“The West Bluffs.”

“Overlooking the sniper test,” Talal concluded quietly.

“It’s something,” Valyn said, shaking his head in frustration. He felt like the truth was
there,
but just out of range, like a familiar tune at the very edge of one’s hearing. “I just don’t know what.”

“But how would beating Lin a mile away get Annick to shoot chisel points?” Laith asked.

“I didn’t shoot chisel points,” the sniper responded. “Those were my arrows, but the heads had been changed.”

Talal started. “Changed?”

“Changed,” Annick said. “This is the fourth time I’ve explained it to Valyn. Those weren’t my points. They weren’t the arrows I fired.”

“Maybe you made a mistake,” Laith suggested.

The sniper fixed him with a frosty stare. “I did not make a mistake.”

“Well, how in Hull’s name did they change midflight?”

“I don’t know.”

The leach took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Maybe I do.” He considered the table in front of him, gathering his thoughts. “Holy Hull, I think I understand.”

“Some kind of kenning?” Valyn asked, trying to catch up.

Talal nodded grimly. “It’s not Yurl. It’s Balendin.”

“You all want to keep chatting in code?” Gwenna demanded. “Or you going to fill the rest of us in? Try using complete sentences.”

“My well is iron,” Talal said, raising his eyes, looking from one to the next. “I told Valyn several days ago, but we’re a Wing, and you all deserve to know. Iron and steel.”

“Iron?” Laith asked, tapping his chin with a finger. “Not very exciting, is it? I thought the wells were all babies’ blood or boiled piss or something suitably vile.”

Talal shrugged. “If you have to be a leach, iron is a mediocre well to have. On the one hand, there’s never that much of it around. On the other, my power almost never runs dry. Especially if you’re a soldier, there’s usually something.” He took a deep breath. “Other leaches have more … complicated wells.”

“I knew it,” Laith said, sitting back in his chair and looking pleased. “Babies’ blood.”

Talal ignored him.

“Like Arim Hua?” Valyn asked. “The Sun Lord in all those stories?”

Talal nodded. “If the legends are true, Arim Hua’s well was sunlight. In the tales, he was fearsome during the day—he could raze cities, destroy armies—but nearly powerless at night. That’s how he was killed.”

“What does this have to do with the arrows?” Gwenna demanded. “With Manker’s?”

“It’s not all about cities and armies,” Talal replied. “For years, I’ve puzzled over Balendin’s well. I’ve seen him do some things … frightening things. Things I could never manage, not without an ocean of iron surrounding me. Other times—” He shook his head. “—nothing.”

“Could he change an arrowhead?” Valyn asked. “An arrow in flight? From a mile away?”

The leach nodded. “He has the skill and, if his well is running deep enough, the power, too.”

“The skill is different from the power?” Gwenna asked, her face puzzled.

“Of course. A leach’s strength is like physical strength, a gift—or a curse—from Bedisa. Having a deep well is like being large and well-muscled. Imagine Gent.”

“I’d rather not,” Gwenna shot back.

“The point is, Gent’s strength is only useful to a certain degree if he doesn’t train, doesn’t study how to
use
that strength. A smaller man—or a woman—could take him down through superior skill. There are leaches with enormous power who never understand what to do with that power. They’re just as likely to hurt themselves as they are to achieve anything useful.”

“And you don’t have enormous power,” Valyn put in.

Talal nodded. “All the Kettral leaches study and practice, but I’ve had to work harder than most. I’ve certainly had to work harder than Balendin.”

“And when are we going to get to the part,” Laith asked with exaggerated patience, “where you tell us what the ’Shael-spawned asshole’s well
is
?”

Talal paused, then spread his hands ruefully. “I didn’t realize it, because some people claim they don’t even exist. I’m almost certain the Eyrie’s never had one before, but I think Balendin is an emotion leach.”

The statement sounded dramatic, but Valyn just shook his head in perplexity.

“Meaning what, exactly?” Annick asked.

“He doesn’t draw his power from iron or water or sunlight, or anything like that. His well is emotion, human emotion.”

For a while the five of them sat in silence, trying to make sense of the idea.

“That sounds,” Gwenna said finally, her face screwed into a frown, “like bullshit.”

“Unfortunately not,” Talal said. “Emotion leaches are horribly powerful, and horribly unpredictable. I’ve read some of the old codices, the ones cataloging the known leaches in Annurian history and earlier. The trouble is, an emotion leach doesn’t simply draw from an existing well, he needs to
create
his well. He has to manipulate people in order to have any power at all.”

“But how do Amie and Ha Lin figure into this?” Valyn asked.

“It’s not just them,” Talal replied. “It’s everyone Balendin has ever come in contact with. He leaches his power from emotion, other people’s emotion. Specifically, emotion that’s directed at
him.
”

“And that’s why,” Gwenna concluded, punctuating her syllables with a finger stabbed repeatedly into the table, “he was such a ’Kent-kissing
bastard
all the time.”

Talal nodded. “A leach’s well shapes who he is to a frightening degree. Once you get used to the power, you start to
need
that power, and you’ll do more and more to get it. When I’m without iron, I feel … nervous, naked. I can only imagine how Balendin feels without emotion.”

“Why not take a more amiable approach?” Laith asked, pursing his lips. “Make a lot of really good friends? Maybe fall in love a few times—a girl in every port, that sort of thing.…”

“A lot easier to evoke hatred than love,” Annick said. “Quicker. More reliable.”

They turned to look at her, but she averted her face from the lantern and seemed to have no more to say.