The Last Mortal Bond (112 page)

Kaden seized the railing of the stairwell as it bucked and shuddered, waiting to be dragged down with the rest of the structure into the inferno boiling below. The wave of heat hit him a moment later, knocking him back into the shadow of the stairs. It was like standing inside the huge stone hearth back in Ashk'lan, and though the flames were too far below to reach them, the air seared his throat, scalded his lungs. He squeezed shut his eyes against the heat blasting up from beneath. Triste wrapped her arms around him, seeking solace and giving it in the same gesture.

The Kettral were talking in low, urgent tones. There was no fear in their voices, only weariness mixed with determination. A few moments later, the staircase stopped shuddering. Valyn leaned out over the edge, stared down for a moment, then pulled back.

“It's gone. Broke off about five hundred feet below us. Takes care of the soldiers.”

“Beats having to fight them,” the Flea said.

Triste stared up at the stairs twisting away out of sight. “Why haven't
we
fallen?”

“Cables,” Valyn said, gesturing up without looking. “The lower stairs were built from the ground up, the next section hung from the prison level. Both of those are gone. We're on the last part. It's suspended from the ceiling, not built up from the floor, but we need to keep climbing, get clear of this heat.”

The climb was an agony of burning lungs and legs pushed past all exhaustion. Kaden counted a hundred stairs, then a thousand, but instead of flagging, the fire below burned higher, brighter, gnawing through the wreckage, rendering all human instruments inside the Spear to ash and char, as though the goddess herself had come down to purify the monument, to consecrate what was divine in a bath of perfect flame. It seemed, for a while, that the fire would overtake them, claim them, too, but there was nothing to do but climb, and so, soaked with sweat and blood, the stairs swaying ominously beneath them, they climbed.

Finally, after another thousand stairs, the air began to cool. Kaden dragged a breath into his lungs, savored the relief, then another, then another, pausing to haul in great deep gulps of it. He tried calling out to Valyn, who was plunging up the steps above, blood burned onto both axes. His voice came out a desiccated husk. He licked his lips, swallowed, then tried again.

“We have to stop,” he managed. “We have to stop.”

Valyn paused, turned. He looked lost, as though he'd forgotten where they were or why they had come. Those ravaged eyes roamed across Kaden's face for what seemed a long time. Finally he nodded.

“Good a place as any.”

Triste leaned against the railing, groaned, then slid down until she was half sitting, half slumped. She vomited noisily onto the platform, over and over, long after her stomach was empty. The Flea and Sigrid took up opposite positions, one a dozen steps above the landing, one below. What foe they expected to fight, Kaden had no idea. Neither soldier had asked why they were here inside the Spear or what they had come to do. Their presence should have been a comfort; without them, il Tornja would have won the fight already. And yet, there was something terrible about warriors willing to kill in the total absence of question or explanation. What they felt about the trail of corpses they'd left littered across the city, Kaden couldn't say. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe that was part of what it was to be Kettral. Maybe, like the Shin, they trained the feeling out of you.

“What now?” Valyn asked.

Kaden glanced at his brother, then looked over at Triste. She had stopped throwing up, mopped the vomit from her chin, then closed her eyes and nodded.

“The
obviate,
” Kaden said slowly, trying to frame a truth larger than the human world with a few words. “It is almost time to free … what we carry inside us.”

The Flea didn't turn. Neither did Sigrid. Just soldiers doing a soldier's work. Suddenly, Kaden envied them that simplicity. Kill. Run. Guard. Already they'd faced down dangers by the thousands, and yet those were human dangers—swords, arrows, fire, threats such as men and women were built to face. They might die in a fight, but no one would ask them to grind out their own lives.

“This tower,” Kaden went on after a pause, “is a link. A bridge. Between this world and another.”

“Whatever that means,” Valyn growled.

“I don't understand it any more than you. The only thing I know is that this is the only place from which the gods can ascend.”

Valyn looked like he was going to object, question the notion further. Then he just shook his head. “Great. We're here. We'll get you to the top. What happens then?”

Triste let out a small noise. It might have been a whimper or a twisted little laugh.

Kaden put a hand on her shoulder, but turned inward, to the mind locked inside the depths of his own mind.

We are close,
he said to the god.
It is time. Explain the
obviate.
Tell me how I can set you free.

For a long time, he thought Meshkent would not respond. Hundreds of feet below, flame chewed eagerly through tons of flesh and wood, roaring as it feasted. Each breath was ash and hot iron. Kaden's legs quaked beneath him. Triste's sweat-drenched skin was molten beneath his touch.

Tell me,
Kaden said,
or you will die here.

Inside, silence. The world beyond, fire. Then, at last, the god spoke.

Submit, and I will burn these foes to ash.

Kaden shook his head grimly, released Triste, then stepped to the edge of the railing.

Explain the
obviate,
or I will end you myself.

Meshkent's snarl was a notched blade twisted in the brain.

You would pit yourself against your god?

Kaden gazed down into the conflagration.
I trained at the feet of an older god than you.

I will flay you with a blade of screams.

Kaden shook his head.
You cannot flay what is not there.

Then, with a motion of thought, he brought the honed blade of his own emptiness to bear against the god's throat, a promise, a threat.
I carried you this far. Do not test me further.

Meshkent, the Lord of all Pain, shuddered, raged, and then went slack. His voice, when he finally gave up the truth of the
obviate,
echoed in Kaden's mind like a child's voice lost in a vast cavern.

“What happens when we get to the top?” Valyn demanded at last. “The gods just … float away?”

“Not quite,” Kaden said quietly, the truth heavy and simple inside him.

“What does that mean?”

“There is a ceremony to perform. Words to speak.” Kaden paused, forced himself to meet his brother's eyes as he said the rest. “And then we have to die.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Valyn's face twisted with something that might have been rage or confusion. As though something human were trying to tear itself free of the bestial fury in which he had fought his way across the city. For a fraction of a second, there was confusion there, confusion and grief and anger. Then it was all gone, the emotion wiped away like so much blood—something messy, unnecessary once it had been spilled.

“What's the other way?” Valyn asked.

Kaden shook his head. He hadn't explained this part back in Kegellen's manse. There had been no reason, and he could find no words. “There is no other way. Humanity depends on Ciena and Meshkent. No one will be safe until they are free, and they can't be free while we are still alive.”

“How in Hull's name did the bastard get inside
you
?” Valyn growled.

“I told you already. I let him in.”

“So let him out.”

“This is the only way.”

“Well, we'll find
another
way,” Valyn growled. “We're safe here. We've got time. We—”

He broke off mid-sentence, cocked his head to the side, then closed his eyes as though listening to something. Kaden watched his jaw tighten. Valyn half raised one of the axes, as though he were about to attack Kaden himself.

“No,” he said, dragging the word out in a long, quiet growl. Then again, “No.”

“What is it?” Kaden asked, though he could already see the bleak contours of the answer.

Valyn's eyes opened. His face was blank, awful.

“They're above us.”

Triste stumbled to her feet. “Who is?”

“Ran il Tornja.”

“Alone?” the Flea asked. He didn't look down, didn't raise his blades, didn't move at all. It was as though he were getting ready, wringing out every last moment of rest, savoring a final stillness, preparing for whatever had to come next.

“No,” Valyn replied grimly. “There are at least fifty men with him.”

“How do you know?” Kaden demanded.

“I can smell him. Them.”

Fear surged like a fire inside Kaden. He wrapped it in a fist, crushed it out. There was no time for fear. He leaned out over the railing of the stairs, craned his neck to look up.

“We're maybe three hundred feet from the top.”

Valyn nodded. “They're coming down.”

“Can you hold them?”

The Flea shook his head. “Not for long. They have the high ground.”

“And a leach,” Valyn said.

Sigrid's head snapped around at that. Valyn nodded.

“He almost knocked Gwenna's bird out of the air. I thought he was down in the streets somewhere. I was wrong.”

Sigrid bared her teeth, made a vicious sound somewhere deep in her throat, and abandoned her post below them, climbing the stairs until she stood shoulder to shoulder with the Flea. Her blacks were a spray-spatter of gore: blood, and brain, and chips of bone. Sweat-streaked char smudged her face. She closed her eyes, put a hand on the Flea's shoulder, and then, as Kaden stared, the grime lifted away from her clothes, her face, her arms, rising clear of her, then sliding aside, hanging in the air a moment like a shadow, then collapsing, blown away on the hot wind. The woman was immaculate, radiant, as though she'd just stepped from a day in the baths. Even her hair fell in graceful waves around her face. Her eyes, however, might have been chips of ice.

The Flea looked over at her, then chuckled. “You always did say you wanted to die looking good. Well, I'll tell you, Sig, you're stunning.”

Triste ignored the woman. She was pacing around the narrow landing like a trapped animal. “We'll do it here,” she said finally. “We'll do it here.” She turned to the Kettral. “If you keep them back, we'll do it here. The
obviate
.” Then she faced Kaden. “You know how, don't you. He told you.”

Before he could respond, she crossed to him, took his hand in her own, then squeezed it gently.

Kaden met her eyes, held them, then nodded.

“Are we high enough?” Valyn asked roughly. “You said the
top
of the Spear.”

“I don't know,” Kaden replied quietly. “But we're as high as we're likely to get.”

“I hear them now,” the Flea said. The Kettral commander turned to Sigrid. His voice was soft, but Kaden could hear it clearly enough. “What do you need from me?”

The woman met his eyes, then reached out to take both of his shoulders in her hands. She made no effort to speak.

“Do it,” the Flea said.

She didn't move.

“Do it,” he said again. “I'm ready.”

She didn't move.

“I've been ready since he died, Sig.” His voice was quiet, gentle. “Do it.”

Then, the movement so fast that Kaden almost couldn't follow it, the woman slid a knife from her belt and slammed it into the man's side. He stiffened with the blow, almost fell, then steadied himself.

“What…,” Triste said, lunging forward despite herself.

Kaden held her back, his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders. He could feel her heart slamming in her chest.

“Her well,” Valyn said grimly. “It's pain. He's giving her the strength to fight il Tornja's leach.” He exhaled slowly. “And I'll do the same.”

“No,” the Flea ground out, his voice on the verge of snapping. “You need to fight … shield her while … she works.”

Valyn gritted his teeth, but even Kaden could hear the footsteps now, dozens of boots pounding down the stairs from above.

Sigrid drew another knife from her belt, more slowly this time, then drove this one, too, into the Flea's flesh. He dropped to his knees.
Dead,
Kaden thought, then paused, made himself really
look
at the wounds, at the angle of the steel where it entered the skin. They were savage, cruel, almost too painful to contemplate, but they weren't fatal. And slowly the Flea rose, met the leach's eyes, and made an animal noise.
No,
Kaden thought. Not a noise. It was a word:
Another
.

And so a third time the blond woman buried a blade in her commander's flesh, a third time he dropped, and a third time he rose slowly to his feet.

“Is it enough?” he whispered.

Sigrid watched him a moment, then took him by the shoulders, leaning over to kiss his blood-smeared forehead with those perfect lips. She nodded, and they both turned toward the stairs, to hold at bay whatever was descending from above.

“We have to do it, Kaden,” Triste said finally, roughly, breaking him free of what felt like an awful dream. “We have to do it now.”

Kaden nodded. It seemed impossible that after all the running, all the fighting and climbing, all the fire and dying, it should come down to this. A whole life, whittled to a few final instants. Slowly, his legs trembling with the strain, he knelt on the narrow landing. Triste knelt beside him.

“How do we…?” she asked.

“Close your eyes,” he replied. Men were shouting above them, pounding down the stairs. Kaden ignored the sound.