Valyn exhaled heavily, pulling himself back to the table, searching in his cup for the words. “We’ve spent half our lives here, Lin, learning to fly, to fight, to kill people dozens of different ways, all to defend the empire.” He shrugged. “Then, when the empire needed defending, when the Emperor needed defending, I wasn’t there to do a ’Kent-kissing thing about it.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Valyn.”
“I know,” he replied, reaching for his ale.
She stopped his hand with her own, forcing him to look at her. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have protected him.”
“I know,” he said again, trying to believe the words. “I know, but maybe I can protect Kaden.”
“Two months,” she said once more, leaning in as though to will her patience upon him. “Just hold on.”
Valyn freed his hand, took a deep swig from his tankard, then nodded.
Before he could otherwise respond, however, the door clattered open and Sami Yurl stepped in. The youth scanned the low room with an expression of amused distaste. He had left his father’s gilded halls nearly ten years ago, but he still seemed to regard the workmanlike buildings of Hook and the other Islands as beneath his dignity, and he crossed under the lintel as though condescending to enter.
“Wench,” he said, snapping his fingers at Salia. “Wine. Whatever’s not watered down too horribly. And a clean glass this time, or I’ll introduce you to my displeasure.”
Salia cringed and bowed her way toward the kitchens, nodding obsequiously.
Lin growled deep in her throat, and Yurl, as though he heard the sound, turned to the corner table where she and Valyn sat. Salia came hurrying back with the full glass of wine, and he took it without looking at her, then raised it toward Valyn with a smirk.
“Congratulations! One step closer to the throne!”
Valyn moved his tankard to the side slowly, then reached down for the handle of his belt knife. Lin caught his wrist beneath the table, her grip surprisingly strong.
“Not now,” she hissed.
Blood hammered in Valyn’s ears, behind his eyes. It was partly the ale—he understood that dimly—but only Lin’s hand kept him from drawing the knife.
“Not now,” she said again. “You fight him, and you’ll end up in the brig for the Trial. Is that what you want?”
Yurl watched the whole scene from a few paces away, sipping at his wine with an amused smile. Like Valyn and Ha Lin, he had left his swords behind, relying on his belt knife and Kettral blacks to keep Hook’s more enterprising criminals at bay. Valyn flexed his hand beneath the table. Yurl’s knifework was good, better than good, but nothing like his swordplay. Knife against knife, Valyn would have a chance. Not to kill the bastard—he’d end up hanged for that—but to cut him down a peg or two … but then, as Lin had already pointed out, he’d miss his chance at the Trial. He put his hands back on top of the table deliberately.
Yurl smiled even wider. “Don’t tell me you don’t want the Unhewn Throne,” he mused, grinning.
“My brother has Intarra’s eyes,” Valyn grated. “My brother will sit the throne.”
“How filial.” Yurl turned his attention to Ha Lin. “And what about you? You figure if you fuck His Most Radiant Highness here enough times, you can ride his gilded cock to wealth and glory?”
It was a groundless gibe. Despite Valyn’s confusing feelings for Lin, they had never so much as kissed. If they shared a blanket sometimes on a miserable patrol exercise, all the Kettral did as much—it was just to stay alive, shivering against each other beneath the woolen fabric, trying to save a little warmth from the hard ground below and the chill air above. The truth was, Valyn went out of his way to avoid such situations, wary, lest she realize he thought of her as more than a fellow soldier. Yurl, however, had never bothered much with the truth.
“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Lin sneered, “just because you don’t measure up.”
The youth chuckled as though amused, but Valyn could see the jest had hit home. Of all the people on the Islands, only Yurl seemed to harbor any lust for Valyn’s position.
He sneered, then turned toward the bar.
“This wine is swill,” he said to Salia, dropping the glass, letting it shatter, the shards bright in the flickering lamplight. “You can pay for it out of your earnings.”
He cast a cool glance at Juren, the hulking thug Manker employed to keep something resembling order. Juren wasn’t too bright, but he wasn’t about to go toe to toe with a Kettral over a broken glass of wine. The man scowled at the floor, but made no move as Salia scurried to pick up the shattered vessel. Yurl chuckled in disgust, then turned toward the door and left.
Valyn slowly unclenched his hand, and as he did, Lin released his wrist.
“Someday,” she said, her voice tight and hard. “But not today.”
Valyn nodded, hoisted his tankard, and took a long pull. “Not today,” he agreed.
A few paces away, Salia was weeping quietly as she swept the broken glass into a pan.
“Salia,” he said, beckoning her over.
The girl rose unsteadily and approached.
“How much was the wine?”
“Eight flames,” she snuffled. “I gave him Manker’s own stock.”
Eight flames. It was probably as much as the poor girl earned in a week. At least, if you didn’t count the money she made on her back upstairs.
“Here,” Valyn said, shelling out enough coin to cover his ale plus the spilled wine and broken glass. The Eyrie didn’t pay soldiers much, especially not cadets, but he could afford it more than she could. Besides, the desire to drink had gone out of him.
“I couldn’t,” she began, though she eyed the coin hungrily.
“Take it,” Valyn replied. “Someone has to clean up Yurl’s mess.”
“Thank you, sir,” Salia said, ducking her head as she scooped up the coppers. “Thank you so much. You’re always welcome here at Manker’s, sir, and if you ever need … anything else—” She batted her eyes, suddenly bold. “—you just let me know.”
“That was gallant,” Lin said with a tight smile after the girl had left.
“She has a hard life.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Valyn snorted. “Good point. Speaking of hard lives, I’m heading back to the barracks—we’re supposed to be running the perimeter before dawn tomorrow, and all this ale isn’t going to be doing my head any favors.”
Lin chuckled. Then, in her best imitation of Adaman Fane’s gravelly voice, she began, “Real Kettral embrace adverse circumstances. Real Kettral lust for suffering.”
Valyn nodded ruefully. “Six tankards on an empty stomach—all part of the training.”
As they stepped out of Manker’s, he stopped to watch the sun setting over the sound to the west. In that direction, more than a thousand leagues distant, past the wind-lashed waves of Iron Sea, past the karst peaks of the Broken Bay, past dozens of islands, some too small for names, Annur glittered, tiled roofs, grand palaces, shit-reeking hovels all clustered around Intarra’s Spear, the enormous glowing tower at the heart of the Dawn Palace. Sailors could make out the Spear when they were still two days distant—used it to navigate toward the heart of the empire. It was supposed to be impregnable, that tower, one of the final fortresses of the Csestriim, and yet, it had not protected the Emperor.
My father is dead, Valyn thought to himself, and for the first time, the words felt real. He turned to Lin, wanting to say something, to thank her for being there, for sharing the ale and the grief, for holding him back when his own anger drove him to strike out. She watched him with those bright, careful eyes, lips pursed as though she were about to speak. Before either of them could break the silence, however, a terrible crack shattered the still evening air.
Valyn turned, dropping his hand to his belt knife while Lin pivoted to put her back to his, settling into the low ready guard the Kettral used as their standard defensive position. His eyes flicked over the street, the alleys, the rooftops in quick succession, reading terrain and evaluating threat. The garish fa?ades of the rickety structures stared back at him, red, and green, and blue, windows and open doors gaping like missing teeth. A dozen yards away, a dog perked up its ears at the strange sound, its bone momentarily forgotten. A few scraps of dingy curtain blew in the light breeze. An alley gate creaked idly on its hinges. Aside from that—nothing. The noise had probably come from the harbor—some drunken idiot who forgot to throw the catch on a winch and let his load go tumbling to the deck. Jumping at shadows, Valyn thought to himself. All the talk of plots and murders must have put them both on edge.
Then, just as he was about to straighten up, Manker’s gave a low, horrible groan. The crack of splintering timber sent the dog bolting away as the alehouse’s roof sagged in on itself, crumpling like wet paper, shedding slate tiles that fell in a deadly rain onto the street. The whole thing lurched toward the bay, then teetered horribly on its stilts. The people inside began to scream.
“The door!” Lin yelled, but Valyn was already moving. The two of them had spent enough time studying demolitions to know what happened to anyone trapped inside a building when it collapsed. People would be crushed or worse, drowned when the structure finally sloughed into the bay, dragging those pinned inside beneath the waves.
The whole building had peeled away from the alley, leaving a gap of several feet between the crumbling dirt of the lane and the listing doorway. Valyn glanced down—twenty-five feet or so to the water—a trivial distance, except for the jagged ends of the shattered stilts thrusting up like pikes. Anyone who tumbled into the space risked getting impaled on those splintered ends or ground into the murky water when the building finally collapsed. A hand appeared on the doorframe, groping desperately from the darkness within. Valyn swore once and vaulted the gap.
He caught the low lintel of the door with one hand, steadied himself, then reached through the door with his other to catch the wrist. He hauled, and Juren emerged, coughing and swearing. Blood poured from a nasty gash across his bald scalp and his ankle twisted sickeningly as he put weight on it, but other than that, the man appeared to be unharmed.
“Stay there,” Valyn said. “I’ll hand the others out to you. You can steady them before they jump over to Lin.” He jerked his chin to indicate his companion, who waited warily on the bank a few paces away.
The man flicked his eyes toward the interior of the tavern. Something had arrested the slow, inevitable collapse, but over the screams of the injured, Valyn could still hear the cracking of posts and beams warped past their tolerance.
“Fuck that,” Juren spat, his lips curled into a desperate rictus. He gathered his weight on his good leg, then leapt for the far bank.
“You shit-licking coward…,” Lin began, yanking the man painfully to his feet by the ear as soon as he hit the bank.
“Leave it, Lin,” Valyn bellowed. “I need you over here.”