34
Whatever wary trust Valyn managed to establish with Talal, nothing had changed in the course of daily training. The Wing was halfway through its probationary period, halfway to flying its first real mission, and they still hadn’t managed to win a single contest. I’d be surprised if Command lets us stand guard over a vegetable stand, Valyn thought to himself grimly as he rolled over in his bunk, restless in the predawn darkness, let alone fly to northeastern Vash to hunt for Kaden.
It wasn’t that the individual members of his Wing were incompetent. In fact, operating independently, each had shown moments of genius: Gwenna rigged and blew an entire bridge by moonlight in less than an hour; Talal swam the entire breadth of the Akeen Channel underwater; and Annick, of course, hadn’t missed a single target, regardless of distance, weather, or time of day.
In spite of these successes, however, the Wing just could not manage to get out of its own way. Gwenna blew the bridge while Laith and Valyn were still crossing it, singeing half their clothes off and dumping them in the water; Talal emerged from the Channel only to take one of Annick’s stunners to the back of the head; and Annick’s perfect shooting only led her to grow more and more scornful of the Wing, as though she were the only professional in a group of children.
Valyn rolled onto his back. It was still pitch black outside, and the early bell had yet to ring, but after a few hours of uneasy slumber, he had lain awake, staring at the bunk above him. He could analyze and condemn the mistakes of his Wing mates until he was blue in the face, but the real truth was that he was failing them. It was his responsibility to formulate each mission plan, his job to make sure his soldiers understood their roles, and his job to stave off personal problems before they became a threat to the integrity of the group. So far, he had done piss-poor work on all fronts.
His mind drifted to the memory of Ha Lin—the banter, shared jokes, and easy camaraderie; the quiet, solid comfort he had felt when she was at his side or seated across the table. All these years, he’d never realized how much strength he drew from her, how much he had always assumed that she would always be there to bolster him. When he pictured commanding his own Wing, he’d imagined Lin there, quibbling with his small decisions but never doubting him, not really. He’d been unconsciously counting on her to back him up. Of course, when it really mattered, he had failed her.
The low tolling of the morning bell broke into his bleak thoughts, and his feet hit the floor before the sound had faded from the air. If the past weeks were any indication, the day was bound to be another failure, but anything was better than lying in his bunk, gazing up into the incriminating darkness, worrying that he wasn’t getting it right, worrying that while he bungled his command, danger, swift but unknowable, was drawing closer and closer to Kaden, his brother, the Emperor.
“Rise and shine,” he said, stomping into his boots before plucking a glowing ember from the fire to light the lamp.
Gwenna cursed from the bunk above, but made no effort to rise, let alone shine.
Valyn shrugged into his tunic and shouldered aside the door into the front room only to find Annick already awake and seated at the large table. She was fully dressed and oiling her bow with long, smooth strokes. For the hundredth time, Valyn wondered what went on behind those ice-cold eyes. He hadn’t had a chance to speak to her alone since before the Trial, since their encounter in the infirmary. Whenever he looked to have a word with her, there were others around or she had mysteriously melted away. She’d convinced him that she hadn’t tried to kill him during the sniper contest, but she was a riddle, and any riddle was dangerous. He shivered at the realization that she had managed to rise, dress, and go to work on her bow mere feet from him without making a sound, all in complete darkness. Why was Amie going to meet you? he wondered for the hundredth time. What are you hiding?
Talal had rolled to his feet and slipped into his blacks while Gwenna grumbled herself halfway out of her bunk. Laith refused to budge.
“Briefing in ten,” Valyn announced, stepping back through the door and kicking the pallet in an effort to jolt the flier into life.
“’Shael’s sweet suckling whores,” Laith cursed, rolling away from the light. “Why don’t you just beat me bloody and light my hair on fire here? Save another Wing the trouble?”
“I’m happy to light your hair on fire,” Gwenna growled. She was perched on the edge of her bunk, raking fingers through her own tangled mane. The light shirt in which she slept did nothing to conceal the curves of her breasts beneath, and Valyn looked away awkwardly. There was no mystery around the female form, not with the Kettral. He’d been eating, sleeping, swimming, and shitting next to his peers for eight years. Better get used to it, Fane used to say. You’re not going to be much use in a fight if you’re ogling the ass of the soldier next to you. Valyn was used to it, but he’d been sharing a barracks with men ever since he arrived on the Islands, and there was something a little distracting about walking into the bunkroom to find Gwenna or Annick bare-assed or halfway into her blacks. He shut his eyes and put a hand to his forehead, hoping Gwenna wouldn’t notice. Staring at her breasts wasn’t going to help his Wing any, and besides, it felt like a betrayal of Ha Lin.
Idiot, he cursed himself. You had nothing to speak of with Lin, and Gwenna would just as soon gut you as kiss you. It was true, all of it, but he felt guilty just the same.
Gwenna was still harassing Laith. “Maybe our royal leader would like me to rig your bed tonight. I’m sure I could arrange a little something to wake you up in the morning.”
“You are an evil bitch,” Laith groaned, rolling over onto his back. “Why couldn’t Rallen have assigned Gent to this Wing?”
“Because Gent is about as capable as a whore with the pox. At least if I blow you up, you’ll know I meant to do it.”
“What?” the flier shot back. “Like the other day?”
“You weren’t supposed to be on the bridge, you idiot.”
“None of this is helping,” Talal said quietly. He sat on his own bunk, lacing up his boots.
“Helping what?” Laith demanded. “It’s certainly helping to ruin my sleep.”
“Good,” Valyn interjected, before the argument could go any further. “We’ve got a lot to work through today, and not much time to do it.” Technically, this was information for the briefing, but they hadn’t been doing anything else by the book. Why start now? he thought to himself.
“What?” Annick asked. She had set aside her bow and was looking over the fletching of her arrows. She didn’t bother to look up at Valyn when he turned.
“Barrel drops,” he replied.
“Oh, for ’Shael’s sake,” Gwenna groaned. “Again?”
“Well, well,” Laith said, rising for the first time, picking his teeth absently with a finger. “I might go an entire day without a bruise after all.”
“Speak for yourself,” Gwenna said. “It’s not so easy when you’re the one dropping instead of the one flying.”
“The other Wings quit doing barrel drops a week ago,” Annick pointed out flatly.
“Well,” Valyn responded with more heat than he had intended, “we haven’t.”
“Who’s in charge of the training?” Talal asked quietly.
“Not Fane,” Laith groaned from the bunk. “Not Fane again.”
“The Flea will be overseeing today’s training,” Valyn replied, trying to keep his voice level.
Silence reigned in the room as the soldiers eyed one another warily.
“Well,” Gwenna snorted finally, dropping out of her bunk and fixing Valyn with those green eyes of hers. “Today, my illustrious lord commander, would be a good day to start getting things right.”
*
At least it’s sunny, Valyn thought to himself, closing his eyes and leaning back into his leather harness. Wind tugged at his hair and clothes, threatening to rip him from his perch on Suant’ra’s talons while the back draft from the great bird’s slow, powerful wing beats buffeted him from above.
After eight years on the Islands, Valyn still marveled at the power and grace of the kettral. Without the kettral, there would be no Kettral. The creatures could cover ground faster than any horse, faster than a three-hundred-oar galley, soar over impregnable walls as though they were thin lines drawn on the dirt, land on towers, and outdistance any pursuit in a matter of minutes. If necessary, the bird herself could even fight, tearing through flesh and armor with her claws and beak as if they were cloth.
In taverns all across Vash and Eridroa, men told tales of the birds, whispering that they fed on human flesh. Most people had never seen one, of course—there were only a few score in the entire world, and the empire guarded them closely—but a good look at Suant’ra wouldn’t have done much to calm anyone’s nerves. She was clearly a predator, with all the attributes of her tinier cousins writ large: the hooked razor beak and raking talons; the long, packed pinions of jet and white that allowed her to ride the thermals or swoop at speeds that would drive a rider’s eyes into the back of her head. She was a bird of prey, all right, and a predator with a seventy-foot wingspan is a fearsome thing.
Flying around enjoying the breeze was all well and good, but it wasn’t much use unless you could get on and off of the bird’s talons quickly. The Kettral often landed in heavily patrolled areas, and a few extra seconds fiddling with straps and buckles could mean the difference between life and death. Barrel drops trained the Wing to disembark over water. It sounded easy enough: fly in low, unbuckle the safety straps, unhitch the barrel filled with weapons and gear (for which the exercise was named), and dive into the water. In practice, however, a barrel drop ranged somewhere between terrifying and deadly.
For one thing, a kettral could fly far faster than a galloping horse. When you hit the waves at that speed, they felt more like brick than water. For another, there were four bodies in play, along with a dozen or so straps and buckles; a collision with any of them could easily bruise a rib or slash a cheek. And then, of course, there was the barrel itself. Some situations didn’t require extra gear, and the Wing could drop in with only the weapons and clothes on their backs. Plenty of more complicated missions, however, called for disguises, extra munitions (that had to be kept dry), even food if the team needed to stay in the field for more than a few days. All of that went into the barrel, which could weigh upward of fifty pounds and hit the waves like a boulder plummeting down a steep hillside. Soldiers had been killed in barrel drops before, and Valyn was starting to think that someone on his Wing was going to be next.
The main problem was Laith. Unlike the four other members of the Wing, who crouched on the bird’s talons during flight, the flier sat in a modified harness on the kettral’s back, just behind her head. The view was better from there, and Laith could control Suant’ra far more easily than from any position below. As a result, the flier felt much the same control as a man on horseback might. The rest of his Wing, on the other hand, felt like cargo. During his years as a cadet, Laith had built up a reputation as a fearless flier, pressing himself and his birds up to and beyond their physical limits. Suant’ra was his creature; he had raised her and trained her, and sometimes the two seemed to share one mind. It made for impressive aerobatics when watched from the ground—impossible-looking loops and rolls and twists. Unfortunately, the two weren’t accommodating to passengers. The kettral were trained to fly with their talons down, and Suant’ra did this well enough, but Laith never seemed to care if anyone happened to be on those talons.
Valyn’s stomach leapt into his chest as his flier dropped the bird into the start of a dive. He glanced over to see Gwenna scowling and tightening her grip on the leather loop tied high on the bird’s talon. Maybe today’s the day we get it right, he thought to himself as Suant’ra gained speed, angling into a stoop. The bright blue of the ocean rushed up at him, filling his vision. Or, he amended as the wind threatened to tear the clothes from his body, maybe not.