Valyn grimaced. She was right. Again. He knew she was right, and yet, there were accidents to go around on the Islands. Just a week earlier, Lem Hellen had had his leg crushed beneath a huge boulder during a training rotation out on Qarn. If Valyn started looking over his shoulder at every turn, he’d never get a wink of sleep, never trust anyone.
“There’s just no way to know,” he said, staring out over the sound. Hook’s colorful riot of tenements and huts was clear across the narrow strip of water. “I could spend a week poking through the wreckage and still have no idea.”
“Maybe,” Lin began cautiously, “you’re not the one who should poke through the wreckage. You’ve been training to lead a Wing the past eight years, and I’ve been studying the fine art of the bow. Half a dozen of our brothers and sisters, however, have been learning to knock down bridges and blow up buildings.”
“Demolitions,” Valyn replied, nodding.
“One of them ought to be able to tell you if Manker’s was rigged.”
Valyn considered the idea. “It would mean tipping my hand. I’d have to let on I was suspicious.”
“Is that so bad? Might make whoever’s trying to kill you think twice.”
“I don’t want them to think twice,” Valyn said, rolling his eyes. “I want them to think once and, if at all possible, drunkenly.”
“Point is, it’s not likely to make anything worse.”
That seemed like the truth. Valyn stared down at the neat grid of buildings below—storehouses and mess hall, bunkrooms and command center. Which one of them would come down on him next? Which was harboring the traitor or traitors? He could wait, looking over his shoulder every other heartbeat, for the next attack, or he could do something. “Does seem like I’m at a pretty low ebb,” he admitted. “Who did you have in mind?”
“I’ll give you two guesses,” Lin replied with a smirk, “but you’re only going to need one.”
“Gwenna.” He sighed heavily. “Hull help us.”
Lin didn’t seem pleased by the prospect either, but before she could respond, a dark shadow passed overhead, silent and swift. Valyn looked up to find a kettral, wings spread wide, swooping in for a drop on the field below.
“Bird in,” Lin said, tracing the backflight over the island, toward the low bluffs to the northwest. “Looks like it’s coming from…”
“Annur,” Valyn concluded. “Fane’s back.”
*
The Kettral mess hall, a low, one-story building packed with benches and long wooden tables, was a far cry from Manker’s, or any of the Hook alehouses. For one thing, it didn’t serve ale—if you wanted a drink stiffer than black tea, you had to cross the sound. For another, there were no whores, no civilians of any kind, just Kettral, same as everywhere else on Qarsh—men and women loading up on hard tack and dried fruit before flying out on a mission, or shoveling down a bowl of hot stew after they returned. The slaves in the kitchen worked all day and all night as well—soldiers needed food at odd hours. Usually everyone was so intent on their meals that any conversation was low and intermittent. When Valyn and Lin burst through the door, however, the place might as well have been a tavern, and doing good business at that.
It seemed as though half of Qarsh was shoved into the hall, packed in so tight around the tables, Valyn wondered if he’d been the last one to notice the bird winging in from the north. People clustered in small knots—a couple of Wings here, a few cadets there—but everyone was talking all at the same time.
Somewhere in the press he lost Lin, but Valyn had eyes only for the man in the far corner of the room. Adaman Fane sat near the door to the kitchens. He looked more intent on tearing apart a side of beef than he did on talking, but Valyn could see that, in between bites, he was responding to the questions of the veterans seated around him. It was a hard group—Gird the Axe, Plenchen Zee, Werren of Raalte—and Valyn hesitated before shoving into the inner circle, impatient though he was.
“Hold on, Val,” someone said, catching his sleeve. “I wouldn’t break into that little chat unless you want a busted head.”
Valyn turned to find Laith, an easy smile on his face, gesturing back the way he had just come. The flier was a hand shorter than Valyn, and lean to go with it, but he had a loose, casual swagger and quick tongue that earned him a role in any conversation and made him seem larger than he really was. Most of the cadets on the Islands were a little cocky—you had to have a high opinion of yourself to think you could make a place for yourself among the most deadly women and men in the empire. Laith, despite the fact that he was a cadet just like Valyn, took self-confidence to a new level. He pushed his bird faster than some of the veteran fliers, executed maneuvers that made Valyn’s stomach twist just watching from the ground, and never failed to brag about it all when he was finished. He infuriated half the trainers and amused the other half, who insisted he’d be dead before he even reached the Trial. For all his bravado, however, he was cheerful and easygoing—more than could be said for some of the other cadets—and he and Valyn were on pleasant terms.
“Come on,” he said, catching Valyn around the shoulders to steer him away from the press. “We’ve got a table over in the corner.”
“Fane’s got news of my father.”
“And you’ve got a strong grip on the obvious,” Laith replied, “along with eight dozen other people here. The man’s been flying all night and the better part of a day. He’s not going to want to talk to you.”
“I don’t care what he wants…,” Valyn began, but then he saw Lin gesturing from across the room. She was at the table Laith had indicated, along with a few other cadets.
“Come on,” Laith said again, not unkindly. “We’ve been here over an hour. We’ll fill you in.”
The five of them crunched into the low benches, Laith and Ha Lin, Gent, Talal, and a quiet youth named Ferron, whom no one thought would pass the Trial. The unexpected arrival of Fane had scrubbed the weariness from Valyn’s mind, and he shouldered in among the group impatiently.
“So?” he asked, scanning the faces for some clue.
“Clergy,” Gent replied abruptly. “Some ’Kent-kissing priest scraping for a little more power.”
“Uinian the Fourth,” Laith added, making room for Valyn on the bench. “I doubt that any future priests, if there are any future priests, will be too eager to style themselves Uinian the Fifth.”
“Priest of what?” Valyn asked, shaking his head in disbelief. Killed in battle, he could have believed, or slain at the hand of a foreign assassin, but for Sanlitun to be murdered by some pasty prelate?
“Intarra,” Laith replied.
Valyn nodded dumbly. Not even one of the Skullsworn. “How?”
“The old-fashioned way,” Gent said. Then, miming the action, “Quick knife to the back.”
“Gent,” Talal interjected quietly, nodding over at Valyn.
“What?” Gent demanded. Then the realization set in. “Oh, I’m sorry, Val. As usual, I’m about as graceful as a bull’s swollen cock.”
“Considerably less so,” Laith said, clapping a hand on Valyn’s shoulder in sympathy. “The point is, looks like the whole thing was pretty simple. Overweening pride. Greed for power. The usual horrible day-to-day bullshit.”
Valyn exchanged a quick glance with Lin. One disgruntled priest with a knife didn’t sound much like a grand conspiracy, but then, the Church of Intarra was one of the largest in the empire. If Uinian was part of a larger plot, who knew where it might lead?
“How’d he get close enough?” Valyn asked. “My father had half a dozen Aedolians around him anytime he was outside his personal chambers.”
“Sounds like he picked the wrong half dozen,” Laith replied, spreading his hands.
“Mistakes do happen,” Lin added. “We heard something about your father maybe leaving his guard behind.”
Valyn tried to square the suggestion with what he remembered of his childhood, but the idea of his father abandoning his guard made less than no sense.
“Command still seems pretty stirred up,” Talal said, absently fingering one of the iron bracelets on his arm. “There’ve been Wings coming and going day and night since we learned about the murder. Maybe someone thinks there’s more to it.” It was just like the leach to be thoughtful, deliberate, reserved in his judgment. Leaches learned early to keep their own secrets close; they learned or they ended up dangling by the neck from a rope. Talal was no exception, and approached the world more warily than Laith or Gent.
“What more do you need?” Gent asked with a shrug. “Uinian will face trial and then he’ll die.”
“It’s like Hendran says,” Laith agreed, “‘Death is a great clarifier.’”
“And my sister?” Valyn asked. “She’s all right? Who’s running the empire now?”
“Slow down,” Laith replied. “Slow down. Adare’s fine. She’s been raised to the head of the Finance Ministry. Ran il Tornja was appointed regent.”
“And a good thing, too,” Gent added. “Can you imagine some bureaucrat trying to keep the military in order?”
Valyn shook his head. His father’s death had clarified nothing, and this further information about Uinian and his priesthood, a kenarang appointed to the regency, about impending trials, only muddied the matter.
All of a sudden the room seemed too small. The press of people, the noise, the stench of grilling meat and lard turned Valyn’s stomach and made his mind spin. The other cadets were just trying to help, just giving him the information he’d asked for, but there was something about the casual way they discussed his father’s death that made him want to hit someone.
“Thanks,” Valyn said, struggling up from his seat. “Thanks for the news. I’ve only got an hour to crash before second bell—I’d better make use of it.”
“You trying to starve yourself?” Gent demanded, shoving a bowl of clotted curds across the table.
“I’m not hungry,” he replied, shouldering his way toward the door.
He didn’t notice until he was outside and halfway to his barracks that Ha Lin had followed him. He wasn’t sure whether he was frustrated or glad.
“That must have been tough in there,” she said quietly, catching up in a few quick steps and falling in next to him. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Death is normal. Isn’t that what they’ve spent the last eight years teaching us? Ananshael comes for us all.”
“Death is normal,” she agreed. “Murder is not.”
Valyn forced himself to shrug. “Lots of ways to die—gangrene, old age, a knife in the back—it all lands you in the same place.”