Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(183)

“Who paid you?” Kaden demanded.

“No idea,” she replied with a shrug. “Clients pay Rassambur, and Rassambur sends someone. Neater that way. Now, who’s coming and who’s dying?”

Tan flexed his fingers on the naczal, and though Pyrre didn’t even seem to notice, Kaden had the sudden, overwhelming premonition that violence was about to erupt, brutal, fatal violence.

“We all go together,” Kaden said firmly, looking Pyrre in the eye, then Tan. “She may be a priest of Ananshael, but she’s on our side.” He forced himself not to look at Phirum’s crumpled form, not to think about that dark steel parting the boy’s soft flesh. His stomach was churning with guilt and fear, but if he failed to convince his umial to go along, someone else was going to get killed. Maybe all of us are going to get killed.

“A few hours ago, the imperial embassy was on your side as well,” Tan growled. “Don’t be so eager to count a man your friend.”

“Or a woman,” Pyrre added.

“I’m not saying she’s my friend,” Kaden responded, trying to keep his voice level. “I’m just saying we can go with her for now. Once we’re free, we can decide what to do.”

“I’m not going anywhere with her,” Triste said. Since Tan had uncovered Pyrre’s real identity, Triste had been staring at her as if she were a viper poised to strike, and now Kaden noticed that her knuckles were white where she gripped the shaft of the candlestick. “I’ll go on alone before I go with one of the Skullsworn!”

Pyrre waggled a knife at her. “Evidently, I was not as clear as I had hoped. Your continuing on alone is not one of the options. If you leave us, they will take you and you will tell them who I am, which will diminish our chances of escape. I’ll go over it again. Please try to follow along this time: You come with us, or I deliver you to the god.”

Kaden snatched Triste by the wrist, worried that she might try to dart away. “And if we all come with you,” he asked guardedly, “you won’t hurt them?”

The assassin spread her arms guilelessly. “I’ve said as much, have I not? Besides, I never hurt people; I only kill them.”

Tan shook his head. “You can’t barter with her. You can’t negotiate. The priests of Ananshael have no loyalty to anyone but their blood-spattered god. This savior of yours has no pity, no compassion.”

“It sounds like you’re describing an obscure sect of monks I recently had the misfortunate to come across,” the assassin replied, an eyebrow arched.

“The question is not one of emotion,” Tan replied, “but of loyalty.” He turned to Kaden. “Did you see this woman hesitate when we told her her husband had fallen?”

Pyrre said, “Jakin was not my husband—that was only a story—but we worked together many times. He was honest, kind in his rough way, and deadly with that crossbow. I will miss him, monk, but I will not weep for him. The god comes for us all.”

Kaden took a deep breath. “Your contract instructed you to save me. So you won’t kill Tan or Triste if I tell you not to.”

Pyrre seemed amused by the idea. “I was paid to keep you alive, not take your orders. Emperor, butcher, peddler: all men die in much the same way, and the god’s ministers tend to them all equally.” She paused. “However, the monk seems to know these mountains, and the girl … the girl may have her uses yet. I have no quarrel if they join us, at least for now.”

Kaden turned to Tan. “What is it Nin was always saying? ‘Truth is just the straightest line between two points.’ Right now the straightest line is all of us together, straight up that ravine.”

Tan considered this, dark eyes hard and impossible to read. “Up,” he said finally, turning toward the path.

“Up,” Pyrre said, shaking her head in bemusement. “Why does it always have to be up?”





45





Valyn had seen some forbidding terrain during the course of his training—the icy Romsdal peaks south of Freeport, the blistering sands of the Seghir Desert, Hannan jungles north of the Waist—but nothing so vast and daunting as the Bone Mountains. The peaks were aptly named: white shards of granite stabbed into the clouds like the bones of the earth itself, shattered and thrust up through the thin soil. Where the white of the rock ended, the white of snow and ice began, glaciers and seracs, sharp cornices edging the highest ridgelines, bowls of dirty snow leaking into frothing white rivers. They went on forever, these peaks, rank after serrated rank, etching the frigid blue sky.