17
“She lied,” Valyn insisted, slamming his fist down onto the table. “The ’Kent-kissing bitch lied.”
“Fine,” Lin responded. “She lied. Saying it over and over again isn’t going to help.”
“Although it is nice to get a firm grip on the facts,” Laith added, his voice too serious for the jest.
It was late—most of the soldiers were racked in their bunks or out on night training somewhere—and the three of them had the long, empty mess hall to themselves. Most of the place lay shrouded in darkness—no point in wasting good oil lighting a room with no one in it—but down at the far end of the space, through the open door leading into the kitchens, Valyn could make out flickering lamps and the humming of Jared, the old night cook, as he went about his business grilling pork for the next day’s lunch and keeping the kettle of tea boiling for soldiers returning late from their training. Laith had kindled the lamp above their own table, although he kept the wick barely long enough for Valyn to see the features of his friends. The flier was pushed back on the back legs of his chair, gazing up into the rafters. Lin’s hair glistened in the lamplight, still damp from her long swim.
She held up her hands in conciliation. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about Annick, but are you sure? You told me Fane held up the knot afterwards, that it was a normal bowline.”
Valyn tensed, then forced himself to take a deep breath. She was just trying to help, trying to sort through the facts with him.
“I managed to untie part of it before I blacked out,” he explained. “I panicked at the end, but I remember the knot clearly enough. It felt like a basic bowline, but it wasn’t. It had those two extra loops—the kind we found in the knot that was holding up Amie.”
“Well,” Laith pointed out, lowering the front feet of his chair to the ground and pursing his lips, “there’s no rule that she has to give you an easy knot. It would be just like Annick to try to drown you on principle.”
“It would,” Lin admitted. “But why would she lie about it?”
Lin still wasn’t convinced that Annick was behind Amie’s death, and her refusal to accept the reality of the situation was starting to grate on Valyn. Normally Lin was objective and clear-sighted, but there was something about Amie’s murder that she couldn’t see past, as though, because of the nature of the violence, it had to have been committed by a man.
“Because she knows,” he snapped. “That’s the only explanation. She knows we found Amie—everyone on Hook probably knows that by now. And if she’s got a brain in her head, she can figure out we were asking questions at the Black Boat.”
“So … what?” Lin asked. “She decides to kill all four of us? And Rianne, too, for good measure? Even if she did kill Amie, that’s an insane way to cover it up.”
“From Annick?” Laith asked, raising an eyebrow. “That actually sounds like a somewhat measured response.”
“I don’t claim to have it all figured out,” Valyn went on. “All I’m saying is there’s too much coincidence here to ignore. She might even have something to do with—”
Lin shot him a sharp glance and he cut himself off. He’d been about to say the sniper might have something to do with the plot against his own life, which meant she might know something about the death of his father, about threats to Kaden. Only he had told no one aside from Lin about the words of the dying Aedolian. It was a measure of his fatigue that he almost slipped in front of Laith.
“Have something to do with what?” the youth asked.
“My bow,” Lin supplied smoothly. “Cracked in the middle of my last sniper test. Valyn thinks someone sabotaged it.”
Laith eyed one, then the other, then shrugged. “Trial’s coming up. It’s going to be people rather than bows cracking before the whole thing’s finished.”
“Provided we make it to the ’Kent-kissing Trial,” Valyn added, turning to Lin. “All I’m saying is to go to the list. Then tell me if you don’t think Annick looks bloody as a slaughterhouse floor.”
“All right,” Lin said, her eyes bright in the lamplight. “Let’s go to the list.”
The Kettral were great believers in lists. The soldiers had lists for everything—checking over a bird before flight, setting a demolitions charge, boarding a ship—everything. Valyn could hear old Georg the Tanner’s voice droning on in the lecture hall: People make mistakes. Soldiers make mistakes. Everyone else on this ’Shael-spawned island is filling your tiny little heads with ideas about spontaneity, adaptation, thinking on the fly. He spat. Thinking on the fly is a good way to make mistakes. Lists do not make mistakes. Georg’s voice could put a roomful of cadets to sleep in a matter of heartbeats, but the man had flown missions well into his sixties, and Valyn tried to listen to what he had to say. You fools want to know how something gets added to the list? A soldier dies. Then we figure out why. Then we change the list. So learn the fucking list.
Unfortunately, there was no list, no set of steps for ferreting out a traitor and a murderer, but a jolt of logical thinking couldn’t hurt.
“First,” Valyn began, raising a finger, “we know that Amie was going to meet a Kettral the morning she was murdered. Second, she was meeting that person in Manker’s. Third, according to Juren, the only Kettral in Manker’s that morning was Annick. Fourth, Annick is a cold-blooded bitch.”
“Your fourth observation seems more emotional than analytical,” Lin pointed out.
“Fifth, the way Amie was killed suggests both Kettral professionalism and a complete absence of moral sentiment. Sixth, that strange bowline shows up in both the garret where Amie was killed and the boat where I was thrown overboard today. And seventh, Annick tries to drown me a day and a half after we find the body and start asking questions.”
Oh, Valyn thought to himself, and finally, there’s a plot to kill my entire family and take over the throne.
“When you put it like that, she doesn’t exactly come out looking like a priestess of Eira,” Laith observed.
“All right,” Lin said, nodding hear head wearily. “I agree. It looks bad for Annick. But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why would she want to kill Amie? And why in such a horrible way?”
“That’s the one I can’t answer.”
“I suppose sheer unbuckled cruelty isn’t reason enough?” Laith asked.
Valyn frowned. Maybe he was overthinking it. Even if Annick had killed Amie, maybe the murder had nothing to do with the plot against him. It seemed plausible that the sniper might just truss up someone and kill her for the practice. Only killing a whore who wasn’t much more than a girl wouldn’t be much practice. And it still didn’t explain the knot that had almost drowned him earlier in the day.
“I just think we need more information,” Lin said.
Valyn nodded slowly. “And I know one place to start looking.”