9
The shrine to Hull, Lord of the Darkness, patron god of all those who moved in the shadows, wasn’t a shrine at all, but a massive tenebral oak, gnarled black limbs stretching over a full quarter acre like arthritic fingers scratching at the sky. Hanging from every branch and twig—packed in so close that when Valyn first saw the tree, he took them for heavy black leaves—dangled bats, tens of thousands of bats, folded tight in their wings, waiting silently for night. When darkness fell, they would take to the air together, a wheeling, darting, silent swarm harrying the sky, leaving the branches bare as bones. Even in summer, the tenebral had no leaves—the bats were its leaves. When they returned to roost just before dawn, the blood dripping from their fangs would soak the heavy earth around the roots, feeding the tree. Unlike its brethren, the tenebral had no need of the sun.
Valyn had seen other tenebrals in the course of his training—they were rare, but grew scattered all over the continent of Eridroa. This tree, however, perching on a low hillside overlooking the Eyrie compound, was by far the largest he had ever come across. Down below, among the storage barns, bunkhouses, and training arenas, the Kettral had erected small shrines to several of the young gods: Heqet, God of Courage; Meshkent, Lord of Pain; even a tiny stone sanctuary dedicated to Kaveraa, in the hope that the Mistress of Fear might leave her worshippers untouched. It was here, however, at the foot of the ancient tenebral, that the Kettral worshipped most devoutly. Courage and pain were all well and good, but it was darkness that covered the soldiers as they winged in beneath their birds, darkness that cloaked them as they killed, and darkness that hung over their retreat like a cloak as they melted away into the night.
Before and after every mission, the soldiers would leave an offering. There were no coins or gemstones littered among the roots, no candles or expensive silks. The Kettral knew how the tree survived. Valyn had spent years watching them wind their way up the narrow trail ground into the hillside, had watched them as they knelt and drew their blades, watched as they dragged the steel across warm flesh, squeezing blood onto the hungry roots. Whether Hull knew, or cared, was anyone’s guess. The old gods were inscrutable.
When Valyn first arrived on the Islands, he had found the tree and the sodden ground beneath it unsettling, to say the least. Valyn’s line, the Malkeenian line, claimed descent from Intarra, and the Dawn Palace where he had passed his childhood was filled with light and air. Now, however, the dark, brooding tree suited his mood just fine. Though Manker’s had collapsed into the bay nearly a week earlier, he hadn’t been able to shake the image of Salia’s bloodied face from his mind. When he fell asleep, he found himself in the burning tavern all over again, heard her begging him not to leave her. When he woke, he expected to find her blood still spattered on his skin.
He was furious with Ha Lin, and felt foolish for his fury. She had made the right call in a difficult situation. As Hendran wrote, Your ideals die, or you do. If Valyn had tried to make the jump with Salia draped unconscious across his back, he would have ended skewered on one of the jagged pilings. But it should have been my decision to make, he thought, balling his hand into a fist. In addition to the basic instruction, each Kettral cadet trained for a specialty: sniper, demolitions, flier, leach. Someone in command had decided early on that Valyn might have the skills to actually lead a Wing; if he passed the Trial, he would find himself in command of his own soldiers, and command required decision.
Blood misted down from above. He ignored it. He hadn’t spoken with Lin since Manker’s, and he didn’t know what to say. Here, at least, in the gloomy shadow of the tenebral oak, he had time to think, to work through his feelings without saying or doing something that he could not take back. Except, as he gazed down the hill in the direction of the compound, he could see a slender shape moving up the track toward him.
Ha Lin stopped just outside the reach of the tree’s branches, glancing up at the quiescent bats with a look of disgust. Valyn had no doubt that when the time came, she would pay homage to the god like everyone else, but she had never overcome her revulsion of the place. It was one of the reasons Valyn had chosen it—he thought the dark limbs and quiet susurrations of the shifting bats might keep her away. No such luck.
Lin’s lips were pursed, and her eyes, normally so open and warm, were hooded as she looked at him. She must have come directly from a training rotation; mud coated her blacks while a small cut wept blood on her left cheek. Somehow, even battered and dirty, she managed to look poised, beautiful even. Which is part of the ’Shael-spawned problem, Valyn thought sourly to himself. He wouldn’t have had nearly so much trouble thinking what to say to Laith, or Gent, or even Talal.
“How long are you going to sulk?” Lin asked finally, raising an eyebrow.
Valyn gritted his teeth. “It was wrong to kill her.”
“Valyn,” Lin said, “right and wrong are luxuries.”
“They are necessities.”
“Maybe for other people. Not for us.”
“Especially for us,” Valyn insisted. “If we don’t have some sense of right and wrong, we’re no better than Skullsworn, killing for the sake of killing, murdering to please Ananshael.”
“We’re not Skullsworn,” Lin replied, “but we’re not knights of Heqet either. We don’t ride around on white steeds, waving idiotically heavy swords and delivering noble challenges to our foes. Or maybe you hadn’t noticed. We’re Kettral, Valyn. We kill people. If we have our way, we poison them, or we stab them in the back. Maybe we shoot them when they aren’t looking, and if at all possible, we do it at night. It might not be noble, but it’s necessary. It’s what we trained for.”
“Not serving girls,” he said stubbornly. “Not civilians.”
“Yes, serving girls. Yes, civilians. If we have to. If they get in the way of the mission.”
“There was no ’Kent-kissing mission. We were trying to get people out of that place alive.”
“Maybe that’s what you were doing, but I was trying to keep you alive,” she spat back, her eyes bright and angry. “The girl was deadweight. She was killing you. I did what I had to do.”
“There might have been another way.” He’d been over it a hundred times already. Maybe he could have forced his way out one of the other windows. Maybe he could have leapt to one of the adjacent buildings. It was academic now. Manker’s was gone, and Salia with it.
“Of course there might have been another way. And you might have been killed. It’s all about odds, Valyn. You know that as well as I do.” Lin sighed deeply and slumped, as though the anger had gone out of her in a rush, leaving her weak and unsteady. “I always thought it would happen in battle,” she said after a long pause. “In a fight at least.”
Valyn hesitated, suddenly wrong-footed. “Thought what would happen?”
Lin met his eyes. “Salia was my first. My first kill.”
On the Islands, most men and women celebrated their first kill the way civilians might celebrate an engagement or a birthday. As much as passing Hull’s Trial or flying a first mission, killing was a right of passage, a necessary step. Regardless of the training and the study, until you killed, you weren’t really Kettral. Lin was right, though. You didn’t expect your first to be an unconscious serving girl. You didn’t want that.
Valyn blew out a long, slow breath. In his anger and guilt, he hadn’t even thought about how Salia’s death might have affected his friend. Although he’d held the girl as she died, Lin had thrown the knife. She had accepted the burden, and not for her own sake, but to protect him. From some forgotten corner of his mind, his father’s words came back to him, firm and uncompromising: You and Kaden will both be leaders someday, and when you are, remember this: Leadership isn’t just about giving orders. A fool can give orders. A leader listens. He changes his mind. He acknowledges mistakes. Valyn gritted his teeth.
“Thank you,” he said. The words came out rougher than he had intended, but he said them.
Lin raised her eyes, her face guarded, as though she expected some sort of trap.
“You were right,” Valyn said, forcing the syllables out. “I was wrong.”
“Oh, for Ananshael’s sake, Valyn!” Lin groaned. “You are so unbelievably proud. I have no idea why I—” She cut herself off. “I didn’t come up here so that you could tell me I was right. I came because I’m worried.”
“Worried?”
“Manker’s,” she said, gesturing across the bay toward Hook. “It didn’t just fall down on its own.”
Valyn frowned. He’d been gnawing at the same idea, but couldn’t be sure if his misgivings were the result of paranoia or healthy concern.
“Buildings fall down,” he replied. “Especially old ones. Especially on Hook.”
“An Aedolian warns you about a conspiracy, and then, a week later, a building that’s stood for decades just happens to collapse barely a minute after you step outside?”
Valyn shrugged, trying to put down the disquiet festering inside him. “You squint hard enough, and everything starts to look suspicious.”
“Suspicion keeps people alive,” Lin insisted.
“Suspicion drives people insane,” Valyn countered. “If someone wanted me dead, there are more elegant ways to manage it than bringing down an entire building.”
“Are there?” Lin asked, eyebrows raised. “Seems pretty elegant to me. An accident—one more hovel on Hook falls over, killing a dozen people. Nothing too unusual. Nothing to suggest an attack on the imperial family. It’s sure to Hull more elegant than cutting your throat.”