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Authors: Brian Staveley

The Last Mortal Bond (84 page)

BOOK: The Last Mortal Bond
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“The second reason I'm telling you this, the more important reason, is that you've got it wrong. I know how people see me now, even on the Islands. I'm a killer, supposedly the best killer we've got. Maybe I am. I've opened up plenty of people, some that deserved it, some that probably didn't. I'd never argue that we are
right,
not me, not my Wing, not the Eyrie, but I was fighting
for
something.”

He fell silent.

“And?” Valyn asked. He'd been half holding his breath, he realized. His chest burned as though with a slow fire.

“You, Valyn, you're just fighting.”

 

44

It was simple enough for Kaden to lever the limp body of Long Fist over the edge of the cliff, into the roiling river below. It should have been easier to run without the Urghul chieftain across his shoulders. Long Fist had been a tall man, and strong, but his flesh had been made of honest weight. Carrying him had been no different, in its way, from lifting stones, or lugging buckets of water, and though Kaden's frame had grown weak during his year back in Annur, his muscles and bones remembered the feel of such physical work. Nothing, however, had prepared him to carry the weight of a god lodged inside his mind.

The thought was too large, too bright to stare directly at, and so Kaden tried to put it aside. Il Tornja's soldiers weren't far behind; Triste had vanished somewhere ahead. If he didn't reach the
kenta
before the Annurians, they were all dead. The god was silent—maybe baffled, maybe preparing a stronger, more deadly strike against the man who carried him—and yet even silent, even insubstantial, the alien weight bore down on Kaden until he felt he might collapse.

Just get to the
kenta, he told himself, staggering after Triste's footsteps.
Get to the
kenta.
You can face what you've done when you're safe on the other side
.

Canyon gave way to ledge, ledge to ramp, ramp to rough-hewn steps, worn almost smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Who had built them, or when, or why, Kaden had no idea. It didn't matter. What mattered was that they offered a way out, a way free, and so he followed them down, down, as they flanked the soaring sandstone wall, a hundred steps, two hundred, and then he was there at the bottom, in a maze of ancient buildings the size of a modest town.

The whole thing was built on a long, rocky shelf only a little higher than the river itself. Debris from the floodline marked the lowest stones of the buildings that were still standing. Most of those by the river had been washed away; several teetered out over the current, as though caught in the act of crumbling. Everything was built of huge sandstone blocks, evidently quarried from the local cliffs. The heavy clay that had once cemented them together, chinking the gaps, had mostly crumbled away, rotting the foundations, leaving huge holes in the walls.

Triste's footsteps led straight down the central avenue, but Kaden hesitated, some sense honed in the glacial cold of the Bone Mountains pricking the skin along the back of his neck. Something was wrong about this place. He ran his eyes over the fallen façades and gaping entryways. Obelisks and great plinths lay shattered and askew, toppled either by the river's seasonal rush or their own unrelenting weight. In recessed grottoes carved into the canyon wall stood a series of blocks that looked like altars, though no text remained to name the gods for whom they had been built. The old stones were strange, unexpected, but it wasn't the stones that had set Kaden's mind on edge.

Behind him, he could just make out the sound of the Annurian soldiers, boots clattering over the ledges above, shouts echoing off the cliffs. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, exhaled, then opened them again. The whole exercise took precious moments, and he still couldn't say what it was about the ancient buildings that had given him pause.

More looking does not mean more seeing.
The quiet voice was Scial Nin's, conjured from the depths of his memory.

Swallowing his misgivings, Kaden stumbled into a run once more, following Triste's tracks between the ruined buildings. She couldn't know where the
kenta
was, but her footsteps showed no sign of hesitation. If anything, she was running faster, panicking, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the soldiers behind.
Trying to escape from me, too,
Kaden realized. The sheathed belt knife slapped against his thigh as he ran, a reminder of the violence with which he'd threatened the girl.

“Triste,” he called, pausing for a moment to listen for her response. Stopping now was a risk. Calling out was a risk. On the other hand, if she overshot the
kenta,
there would be no time to double back.

“Triste!” he shouted again.

There was no reply but the echo of his own voice, thin and hollow above the raging of the river. Somewhere in the vast labyrinth of his own mind, Meshkent stirred. There were no words, but Kaden could feel the god's urgency, his rage. Thoughts and emotions that were not Kaden's own pressed out, testing, searching for a way free.

“No,” he murmured, shoving away all other concerns to focus on the prison he had made. The walls were there, solid and strong, but even in the short time since Long Fist's death, the god had begun to wear down the barriers. It was an assault as wordless and violent as the river's flow, and Kaden could feel that, like the river, it would never rest. Meshkent was inside him now, the impossible current of the divine carving into his own walls, searching for a freedom as wide as the sea. “No,” Kaden said again, taking a heartbeat to fortify himself, to buttress those invisible walls, then hurling himself into motion once more.

He rounded the next corner at a run, and for a few steps into the small plaza he kept running, his legs going through their motions even as his mind struggled to parse the sight: there were armed men in the open square, dozens of them, their bows half drawn, their blades naked in their hands. They wore no uniforms, but something about their deployment, both the organization and the way they stood, whispered the same word over and over:
soldiers
.
Annurian soldiers
. Kaden stumbled to a halt, his mind scrambling to make sense of the scene, to come up with another plan, eyes scanning for some escape.

“Hello, Kaden.” The man who spoke sat on a wide block of fallen stone, half reclining on one elbow, a booted foot propped up on the stone. Unlike the soldiers around him, who looked ready to fight, to kill, this man seemed like he ought to be playing the harp, or eating ripe papaya from a porcelain bowl.

No,
Kaden realized, his bones going cold,
not a man
.

Though he'd never seen the creature in person, he knew that face, had studied it back in the Temple of Ciena what seemed like years ago. Triste's mother had made the painting.
But she didn't get it right,
he thought bleakly.
Not quite.
The courtesan had captured the sharp eyes and the casual smile that bordered on a smirk, she'd inked in the same amusement and disdain, but she had missed the emptiness behind it all. She had painted Ran il Tornja, the human general, without ever realizing that the mind behind that face was alien and inimical, that it was Csestriim.

“Run,” the general said, smiling, waving a lazy hand.

In truth, Kaden had been about to do just that, but the single syllable brought him up short, triggering some primitive wariness.

Il Tornja's smile widened, as though he'd expected that precise response. “Or don't. It doesn't really matter.”

Kaden felt Meshkent go dangerously still inside his mind, an animal trapped in the back of a cage. While the Csestriim studied him, Kaden piled layers of his own thought on top of the god's cell, heaping on his terrors and regrets, his confusion and stillborn hopes, any scraps of self to hide the mind he carried inside. He had no idea what il Tornja could see with those inhuman eyes, but one thing was clear—the Csestriim could not be allowed to catch even a glimpse of the god.

“You weren't—” Kaden began.

Il Tornja cut him off, finishing the sentence with a grin. “Chasing along behind you? No. Chasing is tiring, especially in this heat. It's so much more effective just to go to the right place at the start.”

“How did you know we'd come here?”

The
kenarang
pursed his lips as though considering the question, then shook his head. He almost looked regretful. “I could tell you something about patterns and probabilities, but it wouldn't mean much. Like trying to explain mathematics to an ant.” He shrugged, as though that settled the question. “Anyway, you're here. More importantly,
she's
here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Triste.

The girl slumped between a pair of soldiers, hair falling forward over her face, chin lolling against her chest. There was no sign of violence, but something had knocked her unconscious.

“Not the most hospitable greeting,” il Tornja said, as though reading Kaden's thoughts, “but from what I hear, she's pretty dangerous. I didn't want to end up a smear of blood and flesh like those poor people back in the Jasmine Court.” He cocked his head to the side. “You were there for that, right? Was it as bad as people say?”

Panic surged inside Kaden, a rabid dog hurling itself against its chain. The
vaniate
beckoned, but he couldn't trust himself inside the trance. Instead he seized the panic, choked it until it stopped squirming, until he could think. Facts tumbled over him like cold rain: Triste wasn't dead. Maybe Kiel was wrong. Maybe il Tornja didn't know about the goddess. Maybe he didn't want to kill her. Maybe they could escape. She could wake up. Ciena could fight her way free the way she'd done before. It wasn't over. It wasn't over. It couldn't all be over.

Il Tornja drummed his fingers against the stone and smiled. “Anyway, it was a good lesson, and I owe it to you: always have a leach on your side.” He pointed lazily.

Kaden followed the gesture to an old man, bent and balding, who stood half a dozen paces from the
kenarang
. Kaden hadn't noticed him at first, surrounded as he was by soldiers with their weapons drawn.

“Everyone thinks that leaches are insane,” il Tornja continued, shaking his head. “It's not fair, really. They just see the world … differently from you or me.”

“You and I do not share a view of the world,” Kaden said, surprised that his own voice came out steady.

The general raised his brows. “Oh, I'm not so sure about that! Those monks who trained you, those Shin—I think they're really on to something. I'll bet, if we sat down, you'd find that you and I see eye to eye about a lot more than you realize.” He winked, held Kaden's gaze a moment, then turned his attention back to the old man. “Roshin, though, he's a little different. Loyal, though, and that's important to me.”

Roshin.
Kaden struggled to make sense of the name. Who would name a son after one of the most hated creatures in recorded history? The world had mostly forgotten the Csestriim, but it remembered the Atmani, remembered the horror they had wrought, the devastation. Across two continents and beyond, the names were still spoken with loathing.

The truth resolved so suddenly, so violently, it felt like a leather belt whipped across Kaden's naked brain. Some part of his mind buried deep beneath all rational thought made out the pattern: Roshin wasn't
named
for the Atmani. He
was
the Atmani.

Il Tornja had leaned forward slightly, as though eager to watch the understanding play out in Kaden's eyes. “You see?”

Before Kaden could respond, however, the soldiers behind him clattered into the courtyard. Sweat streamed down their faces. A handful of men toward the back doubled over, hands on their knees, chests heaving. They snapped to attention quickly enough, however, when the man leading them hammered his fist against his heart and barked out a salute.

“Sir!”

Il Tornja nodded casually. “Sarkiin. Good work.” He scanned the men behind, then his eyes narrowed. “Where's the third? The one who was with them?”

It didn't seem possible, but Sarkiin went even more rigid. His eyes were fixed on empty air half a pace in front of him. He looked like a man readying himself to die.

“Gone, sir. Over the cliff just above and into the river.”

If il Tornja was angry, it didn't show.
Of course,
Kaden reminded himself,
he's not capable of anger, not really
.

“Interesting,” he said finally, shifting his attention from his lieutenant and back to Kaden. “Who was he?”

Kaden scrambled for a plausible lie, one this immortal creature might believe. “Ishien,” he said after a heartbeat. “He came with me to find Triste. Before she could do more damage.”

“And why,” the
kenarang
asked, “did he decide to leap into a river knowing he could not possibly survive the current?”

“He died,” Kaden said, hewing as close as he could to the truth. “I tried to hide the body.”

“Sarkiin?” il Tornja asked.

The soldier nodded brusquely. “The man was injured, sir. Badly. I am surprised he made it as far as he did.”

“Describe him.”

Kaden tensed. It was impossible to say just how much the Annurian soldiers had seen. They'd been miles off during the entire chase, but if one of them had a long lens, if they'd managed to find a line of sight somewhere in that canyon …

“Tall,” Sarkiin replied. “Couldn't make out much more.”

“His race?”

The soldier shook his head slowly. “The light was wrong, sir. We only caught a couple of glimpses and couldn't make out much more than shapes.”

BOOK: The Last Mortal Bond
13.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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