Valyn had to agree. Although Balendin Ainhoa was a part of Yurl’s circle, they could not have looked more different. Where Yurl was well-muscled and handsome, the very image of well-heeled Annurian nobility, Ainhoa looked like a savage straight out of the Hannan jungles. The feathers of seabirds hung among his long, dark braids, rings of ivory and iron pierced his ears, and blue ink snaked up his arms. Rumor had it that Balendin had ended up on the Islands after the people in his town—some tiny settlement on the western coast of Basc—discovered that he was a leach. When they came for him, he killed half the mob and fled, stealing and murdering the whole way, until the Kettral were called in to deal with the problem. They dealt with it by recruiting him.
Anywhere else in the Annurian Empire, a leach would have been strung up, stabbed, or strangled on sight. Valyn had grown up believing such men and women were abominations, that their powers were unholy and evil. He remembered old Crenchan Xaw, commander of the Aedolian Guard, waggling his knife as he made the point: They steal from the world around them, leach the power right out of the earth. No man should be able to twist and tangle the laws of nature to suit his will. Xaw was not alone in his convictions. Everyone hated leaches. Everyone hunted them. Everyone except the Kettral.
The Eyrie was always looking for an edge. It wasn’t enough that they had the birds, not enough that they controlled the few mines from which the fabled Kettral munitions were made. It wasn’t enough that their soldiers were better trained and better equipped than any fighting force in the world. Eyrie Command wanted leaches, too, even killers like Balendin. Especially killers.
Valyn had been appalled when he first arrived on the Qirins to discover he would be fighting alongside such perversions of nature. It had taken months to overcome the most basic revulsion and years to grow comfortable around the strange breed of men and women. As it turned out, reports of both their power and their evil were greatly overblown. They didn’t mutter incantations, for one thing, or drink the blood of infants. More important from a tactical standpoint, every leach had a different well, a different source from which he drew his power—granite, water, blood, anything—the secret of which he guarded as closely as his life. Without the presence of his well, he was no more powerful than the next man, a fact that could even the scales considerably. The problem was, if you didn’t know a leach’s well, you didn’t know when you had to be careful.
Balendin motioned his twin wolfhounds—freakish slavering creatures that followed him everywhere—to stillness as he stepped into the ring. They sat like sentinels just outside the stones, jaws gaping, panting audibly in the afternoon heat. The leach glanced skyward, where his tamed hawk circled overhead. The bird let out a piercing shriek, as though aware of his gaze.
“’Kent-kissing thing reminds me of a vulture,” Lin said.
“It’s just a bird,” Valyn replied.
“Maybe,” Laith said, turning to Talal. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to figure out the bastard’s well.”
Talal shook his head somberly.
“You train with him at least twice a week. How hard can it be? There’s only so much stuff in the world!”
“Harder than you think,” Talal replied. “We’re even more wary of each other than we are of the rest of you. Everyone has their disguises,” he said, gesturing to the bracelets encircling his own dark wrists.
“You’re telling me your well’s not copper or gold?” the flier asked.
“I’m not telling you anything—but look at Balendin. The feathers, the rings, the ink … And that’s just what he has on him. It could be something all around us—moisture or salt. Stone or sand.”
“It could be those ’Kent-kissing beasts,” Valyn added, eyeing the wolfhounds warily. “He brings them with him everywhere.”
“Could be,” Talal acknowledged. “Leaches have had animal wells in the past. Rennon Pierce, the raven leach, had an entire flock that perched on his eaves and soared above him when he moved.”
“And you wonder why everyone wants to string you bastards up,” Gent grumbled. “No offense meant, Talal, but the whole thing is sick, filthy.”
Talal eyed the larger cadet, his eyes hooded and inscrutable. Then he turned back to Valyn. “People have been speculating about Balendin’s hawk and his hounds since the day he arrived. Maybe they’re on to something. And maybe he’s playing us. It’s almost impossible to know.”
“Besides,” Laith said wryly, “it’s not like it should matter in the arena anyway.”
According to the rules, while in the ring, Balendin was restricted to the use of his body and blades, just like anyone else; the Eyrie believed in developing “the whole soldier,” and had no interest in training a group of men and women who would be useless on the battlefield the moment their wells ran dry. The reality, however, was slightly different. As long as a leach could work subtly, could twist the world around him without anyone noticing, his intervention was permitted. Kettral commanders could ferret out this kind of meddling if they tried, but they never tried—cadets needed to learn to fight in all circumstances, needed to grow comfortable fighting any foe.
“That’s one pair,” Arbert mused. “Any thoughts about who I ought to pit against them?”
The cadets erupted in a chorus of suggestions. Between the rigors of training and the exhaustive study, there wasn’t much leisure for entertainment on the Islands, and most of the assembled soldiers waited each day for Blood Time the way men and women back in Annur looked forward to a well-laid table at dinner.
Arbert held up a hand for silence, but before he could speak, Lin stepped into the ring.
“’Shael on a stick,” Valyn muttered beneath his breath.
“I’ll fight them,” she said flatly, not taking her eyes from the two.
Sami Yurl smirked.
Arbert chuckled. “All by yourself? Hardly seems fair.” He turned to the crowd. “Anyone want to join her?”
The group shifted uncomfortably, some gazing off toward the barracks, others out toward the open ocean. Sami Yurl was a self-involved bastard, but he was also quick with his blades, and brutal in the ring. And then there was the leach to consider.
“Unnatural,” Gent grumbled, eyeing Balendin warily. The huge cadet wasn’t afraid of much, but he held a fear of leaches matched only by his loathing of them.
“I’d step up,” Laith said, grinning at Valyn, “but I don’t want to deprive you of an opportunity for gallantry.”
Valyn sighed. It looked as though his return to the ring was going to be a little more exciting than he’d expected. He couldn’t leave Lin on her own, and he’d been aching to put a fist in Sami Yurl’s face since the scene over in Manker’s. One-on-one he’d have little chance, but Balendin’s bladework was mediocre. If they were able to take the leach out of the arrangement quickly, they could both concentrate on Yurl. And besides, he thought ruefully, no one else is volunteering.
“I’ll do it,” he said, stepping over the low rope.
The fight began poorly. Valyn would have preferred to square off against Yurl while Lin faced Balendin, but the leach managed to engage him first, leaving Lin to defend herself. She was a full head shorter than her opponent, and certainly weaker as well, but she was savvy. As Yurl’s blades snaked in and out, slicing, probing, she fought elbow to elbow with Valyn, refusing to be drawn off her guard by a series of clever gambits.
When Valyn first arrived on the Islands, he had thought bladework was all about strength, technique, and courage. The reality was far more pedestrian. Although those qualities all mattered, they paled before the necessity of discipline, the ability to wait, to watch, and to avoid mistakes. The first step in winning, Hendran wrote, is to avoid losing. While Valyn battered back the leach’s attacks, Lin held her own at his side, playing a tight, cautious game, her breathing heavy but steady. Valyn felt himself smile. If Lin could just hold Yurl off for a while longer, he would find an opening, and then they could both press Yurl.
Then the leach started talking.
“I never understood,” he began in a laconic voice that belied the sweat dripping from his forehead, “why the Kettral let women fight.”
Valyn swatted aside a thrust and forced him back a couple of paces, but the youth kept up his taunts.
“I know all the stated justifications, of course: women can pass unnoticed where a man would draw attention, they’re often underestimated by a foe, but it just doesn’t add up. For one thing,” he observed, “they’re small and weak. For another, they’re a distraction. Here I am in the ring. I should be focusing on my bladework, and all I can think about is ripping the pants off this bitch.”
Lin growled at Valyn’s side as she parried a sweeping overhand slice.
“Ignore him,” Valyn said. “He’s just trying to get in your head.”
“Actually,” Balendin countered with a leer, “I’d be more interested in getting inside something else. What do you say, bitch?” he demanded. “I’ll go easy on you here, as long as I can make you moan later.…”
Sami Yurl chuckled—a low, nasty sound—and took a step back, flamboyantly dropping his guard.
“Leave it…,” Valyn started to say, but Lin wasn’t going after Yurl. Instead, she used the opening to drive at Balendin, cutting across Valyn’s line of attack and breaking formation to drive the leach back.
For a second Valyn thought she was going to batter him straight into the ground, so great was the fury of her blows, but as she forced her way forward, her foot twisted on the packed sand beneath her, and she went down with a scream of rage and frustration.
Balendin grinned and, with a feline grace, leapt over her crumpled body to engage Valyn once again. The leach wasn’t the strongest blade, but he knew how to tie up an opponent, and Valyn found himself pushing forward but unable to drive his enemy back.
Behind the screen, Sami Yurl took a step toward Lin. She swung at him with one of her swords, but he parried the blow easily. Then, in a rush, he was on top of her, driving her face into the dirt while she screamed. Valyn tried to keep his mind on his own fight—he couldn’t help Lin if he, too, ended up sprawled out on the ground, but it was hard not to hear her shrieks of rage, and he felt his own anger rising, hot and bloody. Yurl had straddled her, and instead of ending the struggle with a blow to the back of the neck, he was reaching down between her legs, trying to force her thighs apart as she thrashed and writhed.
It’s a trap, Valyn realized grimly. Yurl wants you to rush. The knowledge was as clear as it was irrelevant. He couldn’t just trade ineffectual blows with Balendin while Lin was screaming. ’Shael take it, he spat. Then, with a roar, he launched himself forward, hammering the leach back with a flurry of savage attacks. For a moment he thought it was going to work. Balendin gave ground, falling back with a look of alarm on his face, opening a path to Sami Yurl. Valyn stepped into the gap, but somehow, in his haste, he tripped, stumbled over what had seemed flat ground, and then he was falling. He had time to twist, to try to raise his guard, but the leach was too fast. The blunted blade came down on his forehead like midnight.