“The musician who raised you. What other father matters?” She smiled. “What would he want you to do?”
Kihrin scowled, but the scowl didn’t stay on his face. A moment later he wiped his eyes and smiled back at the vané woman. “You’re right, Lady Miya. I should do what Surdyeh would want.”
“Shall I have the servants bring you dinner?” Lady Miya asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, his expression determined.
He would do what Surdyeh had wanted from the beginning: he would run and hide, the first chance he had.
35: RED FLAGS
(Kihrin’s story)
Six months passed. The teacher Khaemezra had promised—
What?
Are you kidding? All the Black Brotherhood secrets I know and that’s what you pester me about?
Fine. Yes, Kalindra and I became lovers. No, I won’t go into detail. You’re the one who’s absorbed a thousand minds, Talon. You should know how this works.
* * *
As I was saying, after six months, the teacher Khaemezra had promised me still hadn’t materialized. I learned general weapons with Szzarus, and magic from Tyentso whenever she had free time. Her classes were short, not because she didn’t want to teach me but because I found myself incapable of learning. Despite my talent for invisibility or my ability to see past the First Veil, I proved inept at any other form of magic.* Tyentso blamed the Shadowdancers for leaving off my training after Mouse’s death, and cursed them enthusiastically at the end of every failed lesson.
The molten mound of volcanic rock off the coast of Ynisthana became a cone-shaped island, growing a few feet every time the Old Man stopped by—which was often.
I stayed away from the beach.
Unable to excel at the magic I needed to escape, I threw myself into physical training. I worked myself to exhaustion during the day—and to a different sort of exhaustion with Kalindra during the night. Slowly, we unraveled the lingering effects of Xaltorath’s assault while the months chased after each other in rapid succession.
Teraeth was right about one thing though: eventually, Kalindra left me.
I remember the morning well. I was halfway up the side of Ynisthana’s volcano, a perfect cone of black basalt rising through the mists until it ended in a bowl-shaped caldera. We hadn’t yet left the tree line for the narrow trails up the side of the mount.
There I was, sneaking up on Teraeth, feeling for the first time in months like I might get the drop on the man. He was good at stealth, but I was better. As I watched him prepare a trap for his fellow assassins using nothing but a few branches and jungle vines, I felt satisfied. I had a blackjack in one hand and I mentally chanted my spell of invisibility as I approached. He had no idea he was about to lose the contest.
The Black Brotherhood often trained through contests and challenges, tasks set by Khaemezra or other leaders. Even though I never wasted an opportunity to remind them I wasn’t one of their initiates, they always invited me to take part. Our task that day was simplicity itself: reach the top of the volcano, steal the flag Kalindra had planted there, and bring it back to the temple.
No other rules applied. If I liked, I could’ve waited for a student to reach the top first, ambushed them, and stolen the flag. Or, were I to reach the flag first, I might replace it with a duplicate. The intrigues were legion. Nearly anything was permitted.
Thus, I snuck up on Teraeth, who I was sure would be my major competition. When I was so close to the man I smelled the scent of his skin, I swung up and around, letting the blackjack fall—
Where it swung straight through the empty air of an illusion.
“Hell.”
But it was too late.
While I had been ambushing Teraeth, he had been ambushing me.
I turned my body to the side just as Teraeth’s foot swung through the space where my head had been a moment before. I felt indignant. Then the Stone of Shackles turned cold.
Okay, so we weren’t playing.
In theory, the Brotherhood wasn’t supposed to use lethal force on me. I wore the Stone of Shackles, which would cause unpleasant, if unclear, complications should anyone kill me. Easier said than done: Teraeth had a bad habit of forgetting to pull his punches.
What can I say? I don’t think it was anything personal, just that Brotherhood members are trained to kill. Once you get that instinct into your system, it’s a hard thing to get back out again.
I tried to grab his leg as it passed to throw him off balance, but he was too fast. He kept spinning and I barely understood what was happening before his other foot hit me across the face.
I went down.
I wasn’t out though. When he approached, I grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him to the side, and punched his jaw.
He tapped the side of my neck with the cold edge of his dagger.
“Slow yourself,” he hissed, “and yield.”
I looked down at the knife. It seemed sharp. I could take the poisoned edge as granted.
I said, “If you’re going to slit my throat, get it over with.”
Teraeth scoffed, but the way the stone’s temperature turned back to normal told me I’d reminded him that he was about to do something rash. He backed away from me, returning the knife to his belt. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.” He picked up a length of vine. “Would you rather be tied up or unconscious—”
I was already running up the mountain trail.
Behind me, I heard Teraeth’s laughter, then his footsteps, fast and close.
The volcano itself was stark. I’d never learned its name, assuming it wasn’t called Ynisthana. There was a kind of beauty to that bleak rock, home to nothing but patches of moss and lichen, silhouetted against the teal sky. The scent of sulfur hung thick from wisps of smoke escaping the caldera. The rock underneath my feet shimmered with the suppressed heat of the fires below. The temperature grew warmer as I climbed until I was gasping for breath from more than exertion.
I wished Tyentso had been able to teach me how to protect myself from fire.
When I reached the summit, the red flag sat there in the open, pinned under a rock.
Teraeth was right behind me. As soon as I reached the lip of the caldera, I jumped up onto the largest boulder in the area and slipped my invisibility back over me.
“Damn it!” Teraeth’s hand slashed through the space where I had been a moment before. Then he stopped, casting his head to the side as he examined the ground.
He was looking for any dislodged scree that would betray my position.
I grinned. There was something so feral about Teraeth when he hunted. He reminded me of one of the island drakes, completely focused on his prey.
Then I saw the ship.
The volcano rose thousands of feet into the air, which meant that when standing on the summit it was possible to see a great distance on a clear day. That day was beautiful and balmy, making it easy to see the many islands that formed the chain of which Ynisthana was just one link.
“Teraeth, there’s a ship out there.”
He spun toward the sound of my voice. “You’re not going to distract me that—”