Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (42 page)

“A couple more years,” Fane bellowed from a few seats away, “and you’ll be fat enough to have tits of your own.”

“Holy Hull,” Gent said, holding his huge head in his hands. “Sweet Holy Hull.”

Laith clapped him merrily on the back. “Good news for us! At least Val and I know we won’t have to lug your bulk around the better part of two continents. I swear, with you hanging from the talons, my bird flies at half speed.”

Gent shrugged off the crack and rose unsteadily from his seat to meet his new Wing mates. They were already filling an absurdly large horn with ale, gesturing toward him eagerly.

Valyn watched him go with some trepidation. Laith’s jesting aside, losing Gent to one of the veteran Wings was tough. He’d been one of the few cadets that Valyn trusted, one of the few he had hoped to serve with. Now the pool of soldiers remaining for his own Wing was that much smaller, the possibilities just a little more dangerous.

Rallen sent two more cadets off to the veterans—Jenna Lanner and Quick Hal—good soldiers, but unremarkable by Kettral standards. Then the real fun began. There were three Wing leaders in the class: Valyn, Sami Yurl, and Essa, a short young Raaltan woman with arms the size of her thighs. By the end of the morning, the three of them would be commanding the Kettral’s newest soldiers.

“Sami Yurl,” the Master of Cadets began, pointing imperiously to a spot just in front of his table.

Yurl rose, flashed a quick grin to the crowd, slapped a few of his cronies on the back, and crossed the intervening space. How he managed to look like royalty while dressed the same as everyone else, Valyn had no idea—probably something about the strut.

“Let’s see who’s lucky enough,” Yurl began, raising his chin and eyeing the crowd coolly, “to serve under the next Kettral legend.”

There was some hooting and heckling from the veterans at that, but Yurl only smirked.

“For those of you who might want to place a bribe with Master Rallen,” he added, “I’m sure it’s not too late.”

“Enough out of you, Yurl,” Rallen snapped. “You’re here to listen, not to talk.”

“I’m here to lead,” the youth responded. He never even batted an eye while the names were called.

Valyn had no idea how the Eyrie drew up the various groups, but Yurl ended up with a Wing that was little different from his daily cabal of thugs: Remmel Star, the bearded demolitions master; Hern Emmandrake, a thin sniper who used the feral cats around the Eyrie as targets; Anna Renka, the only woman on the Wing, its flier, and probably Yurl’s bedmate as well. Rumor had it that when he went whoring over on Hook, she liked to watch, liked to … encourage the girls. She was pretty enough—short blond hair, lithe limbs—but there was a cruel twist to her mouth that set Valyn’s teeth on edge. And then, of course, there was Balendin Ainhoa, feathers and ivory hanging in his long braids, face a bored mask as he took his place alongside the other killers, hounds at his heels, falcon perched on his shoulder.

“Well,” Laith said, drawing a sharp breath between his teeth, “that’s about as nasty a crew as you could come up with.”

Yurl had nodded at every name as though he expected it, and now, with his Wing assembled beside him, he shot Valyn a smug glance, then took a step forward.

“As I said, you’ve all just had the privilege of seeing the formation of what will be the Eyrie’s best Wing. Fane, step aside. Flea, look out.”

Adaman Fane snorted. The Flea didn’t even look up from his nails.

“You’re done here, the lot of you,” Rallen said. Then his fleshy lips spread into a grin. “We need to make room for the Light of the Empire, Valyn hui’Malkeenian.”

Valyn stood warily, then crossed to his place at the center of the arena. As he passed Sami Yurl, the youth elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

“Have fun up there. Too bad he won’t be calling Ha Lin’s name.”

Valyn resisted the urge to seize the elbow and shatter it.

In a way, it was a blessing that Rallen had assigned the most sadistic soldiers to Yurl’s Wing—it left a more manageable, if less deadly, lot for the next two commanders. Valyn scanned the faces. Peter the Black and Peter the Blond, the former as tall as the latter was short, were a solid combination. Or Aacha, the Hannan leach—Valyn would have preferred not to have a leach at all, but Aacha was more powerful than Talal, the weakest of the lot. There were capable soldiers still in the mix, if only Rallen would see fit to send them his way.

“Serving as flier under Valyn … Laith Atenkor.”

Valyn found a smile creeping onto his face, the first, he realized, since Lin’s death. Laith was a hothead, but he was a daring flier and a friend. Perhaps the selection wasn’t rigged against him after all. The flier rose from his place, spread his arms to acknowledge the cheering and the heckling both, turned in a slow circle, then sauntered to the center of the arena.

“I hope you like to go fast,” Laith murmured as he took his place at Valyn’s side. “Fast and really, really low to the ground.”

“Just remember that the rest of us have to ride
beneath
the ’Kent-kissing bird. I don’t want to get scraped off by any treetops or chimneys.”

“No promises,” the flier replied, grinning.

“Serving as leach,” Rallen continued, “Talal M’hirith.”

So. It was Talal after all. Valyn met the youth’s eyes as he approached, but it was hard to read anything in that somber brown gaze.
The fighters who frighten you are not the fighters to fear.
Hendran again.
The man you barely notice will be the one to bury a blade in your back.
Valyn extended a stiff hand.

“Welcome,” he said. He would fly with a leach, but he didn’t have to like it.

“As demolitions master,” Rallen continued, his grin stretching into a leer, “Gwenna Sharpe.”

Valyn stifled a groan. Gwenna
had
helped him out by diving into the wreck of Manker’s, but if Laith could be a hothead, she was an open fire. She’d spent more hours on third watch than any cadet in the class, largely because of her inability to accept anything that sounded like an order.

“This should be fun,” the flier murmured at his side.

“Shut it,” Valyn hissed. The last thing he needed was a spat before his Wing was even fully formed. As long as he could corral Gwenna, get her to listen—

“Finally, assigned to a position as the Wing’s sniper … Annick Frencha.”

Valyn’s stomach lurched. Annick, who had put an arrow through his chest, who had met Amie on the day that she died, who was concealing a secret dark enough that she might have been killing people for the last two months to keep it safe, who might have brought the Liran cord into the Hole and murdered Ha Lin. The sniper’s eyes were blank as the sky when she joined the group, her face still. There was no telling if she was happy or sad, no telling if she even had the
capacity
for those emotions.

Valyn extended the hand again. “Welcome,” he said, the word like sawdust on his tongue.

Annick considered Valyn’s hand, shrugged, then took her place at the end of the line.

“On behalf of Eyrie command,” Jakob Rallen said, intoning the phrase with obvious satisfaction, “may Hull guard your approaches and cover your flights.”

The words sounded like a sentence rather than a blessing.

*   *   *

“You’ve got an hour,” Fane said, tossing a map onto the bench where Valyn sat, still slightly stunned, with his newly formed Wing.

“An hour for
what
?” Gwenna demanded, raking her red hair back over her shoulder.

“Figure it out,” Fane said as he walked away.

“All right, leader,” Laith said, gesturing toward the map with a grin. “Lead.”

Valyn scooped up the map. He’d hoped there’d be a chance to talk things over with the group, to establish some basic protocols, but evidently the Eyrie belief in preparing for the unexpected didn’t end once you had your own Wing. In about a month, they would all pass probation and be sent out on missions of their own. Until then … he unfolded the paper, spinning it until the north end faced north.

“It’s an island,” he said, taking in the contours, searching along the bottom of the page for a scale marking out distances.

“He’s going to be a good commander,” Gwenna said, rolling her eyes. “He knows an island when he sees one.”

“Save it,” Valyn grumbled. “It’s Sharn—about twelve leagues south of here.”

“Means we’ll want Suant’ra,” Laith said, turning from the group, heading toward the massive rookery where the birds were tethered.

“Wait,” Valyn shouted. He wasn’t even sure what they were supposed to do yet, but the flier just waved.

“I’ll be back by the time you’ve got it sorted.”

“’Shael can have him,” Valyn said as he turned his attention back to the map. Gwenna was hovering over one shoulder, Talal over the other, and Annick seemed to be reading the entire thing upside down from her seat on the bench. “Everyone, just take a step back,” he snapped. “I’ll let you know when I’ve looked it over.”

“Oh yes, Your Radiance,” Gwenna said, recoiling with a look of mock horror on her face. “We didn’t mean to crowd you, Your Excellency.” She sketched a dubious curtsy. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your proper honorific. Do you prefer Sir, Commander, or My Most Noble and Honored Lord?”

Valyn tried to keep his temper. Maybe Gwenna was testing him, and maybe she just didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a Wing leader her own age. Either way, getting in a fight with his demolitions master on the day of Wing Selection wasn’t likely to improve their chances of success at whatever ’Shael-spawned task Fane had thrown their way.

“Commander will do fine,” he growled. “Do you have your kit? We don’t know what we might need out there. Maybe some moles, or some starshatters.”

Gwenna’s green eyes blazed. “Of course. Maybe you’d forgotten that the new Wings always have a test right after selection.”

Valyn silently cursed himself. Between trying to ferret out Lin’s killer and recovering from his exhaustion in the Hole, he
had
forgotten. Not that he could afford to let the others know that.

“Good,” he said gruffly. “Annick, you’ve got your bow.”

“We’re wasting time,” the sniper said curtly. She gestured to the map.

Valyn bit off a sharp response and returned his attention to the inked lines.

“It’s a grab-and-go,” he said. “There’s a target in the middle of the island—doesn’t say what. We go in, we get it, we get out. Basic.”

“What about the other Wings?” Talal asked. The leach wasn’t paying as much attention to the paper in front of them as he was to the surrounding knots of soldiers. They had maps, too, Valyn realized. Sami Yurl was hunched over, gesturing to his people, then back to the paper. They had the
same
map, and they were already formulating a plan.

“Fine,” he said, trying to slow down his thoughts and his pulse, failing at both. “We’ll come in from the north—”

Annick shook her head, a curt, clipped gesture. “Not good.”

“Why not?” Talal asked, turning to the parchment.

“Sharn is to the south,” Valyn pointed out impatiently. “The interior is all jungle, too heavily forested to make a drop there, which means we need to put down on a beach. The closest is to the north, and the route overland to the target is shorter.”

“Except it’s overland,” Annick said, her eyes locked on his. “If we come in from the east, we go a little farther, but we can take this ravine—” she pointed to a crooked line on the map“—all the way up. No getting lost. We walk in the water. No tripping over roots or hacking through brush.”

Valyn eyed the ravine. He didn’t like the thought of following the low ground, but the sniper was right—they
would
move faster out of the jungle. A good commander didn’t just command; he listened as well. Valyn took a deep breath and swallowed his pride. “Thank you, Annick. I think you’re right. Let’s take the eastern approach.

“Talal,” he went on, turning to the leach. “What’s your well?”

The youth drew back, his dark eyes narrowing. “I don’t … I don’t tell anyone that.”

Gwenna rolled her eyes. “This isn’t just
anyone.
This is your
commander,
and he wants to know your well.”

“Gwenna,” Valyn said, raising a hand. “Please.” He turned his attention back to Talal. “I need to know,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. Yurl’s Wing was already moving toward the harbor, and Essa was gesturing vigorously to her map and her soldiers, evidently putting together some sort of attack. “We’re Wing mates now. You can share that sort of thing.”

The leach shook his head. “I can tell you that I’ll have access to it on the island, but it won’t be very powerful.”

“What
is
it?” Valyn demanded, more heatedly than he’d intended.

“I’m not telling you.”

Annick looked from the leach to Valyn and back again. “You’re acting like a fool,” she said flatly. “You’re hurting the Wing.”

“I’ve told him what he needs to know,” Talal insisted, his voice quiet but hard. “We can waste time arguing about it, or we can get on with the planning.”

Valyn locked eyes with the leach. It was a direct challenge to his nascent authority, but the other Wings would be airborne shortly and bungling his first exercise as Wing commander might be even worse.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said curtly, turning his attention back to the map. “Talal, you’ll take point; hopefully whatever you
can
do will be enough if we’re surprised. Gwenna will be a dozen paces back. I’ll be moving through the trees to the right of the stream. We’ll have Laith on the left bank. Annick, you’ll be in the water, shallow enough that you can still shoot. If we flush out someone, hit ’em with a stunner.”

The sniper nodded curtly.

“Here comes the bird,” Gwenna said, gesturing over her shoulder, and then Suant’ra was upon them in a flurry of wings and wind.

*   *   *

The exercise did not go well. The river was deeper than anticipated, the current stronger. Valyn’s Wing was forced out of the water into the thick brush along the banks, and even with their swords out hacking a path, they made horrible time and put up enough of a racket that anyone listening would have plenty of time to flee or attack, as they saw fit. Yurl’s Wing chose to attack.