Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(185)

Valyn shook his head.

“How many buildings?”

He shook his head again, and Gwenna rolled her eyes.

For the hundredth time, he found himself wishing his brother had written in more depth about his life with the Shin. There had been letters—brief notes arriving via ship from Annur, sometimes years out of date—but the little “training” Kaden described sounded as bizarre as it was pointless. Evidently, the monks spent their days crafting pots or painting or just sitting around, admiring the mountains. As his eyes flickered over another rock-strewn valley, Valyn realized that, for all his anxiety, he didn’t really know his brother anymore. They had been constant childhood companions, but as their father used to say, different soil yielded different fruit, and it was hard to think of any soil more different from the Qirins than these hard, unforgiving peaks. Kaden the boy had been quick to laugh, eager to explore, but Kaden the boy was nearly a decade gone. For all Valyn knew, he could have thrown away his training, maybe even his life, in order to rescue an imbecile or a tyrant.

Gwenna’s elbow jarred him from his thoughts. Dusk was gathering, the sun sagging toward the western steppe, but his demolitions master was pointing off to the northeast at what looked like one more notch in another file of peaks. Valyn couldn’t make out much of anything at that distance, certainly not the indistinct hue of stone huts against a stone background, but then, just as he was about to look away, a bright flash caught his eye. Setting sun on steel, he realized, then tugged a quick code on the signal straps leading to the flier’s perch above.

Laith pulled the bird up above the highest peaks, above the low, scudding clouds—so high, the thin air scraped at Valyn’s lungs, and he thought his fingers might freeze to the rigging loops on ’Ra’s talons. Kettral had no protocol for fighting other Kettral, but Valyn’s Wing had discussed this ahead of time. Yurl would be flying low, scanning the ground just as they had been. Valyn calculated the angles. They were south of the flash and quite a few miles to the west—it was possible that the other Wing had glimpsed a similar reflection of light, but it didn’t seem likely, especially if they were focused on the terrain below.

Men are like deer, Hendran wrote. They never look up.

Laith was urging the bird higher and higher still, until they soared through the darkening air thousands of paces higher than the highest mountains. If he was able to bring ’Ra down from above, it seemed possible to destroy Yurl’s entire Wing with one of Gwenna’s arrow-mounted starshatters—Annick had only to bury the thing in the bird’s tailfeathers and let the wick burn out. He glanced over at the sniper and saw that she’d already nocked an arrow to the string of her bow, leaning far out in her harness over the edge of the talon, searching the sky below for her quarry.

There’s even a chance that we got here first, Valyn realized, hope rising within him. The thing Gwenna saw could have been Ashk’lan itself, some monk returning from the fields with a hoe slung over his shoulder.

As they drew closer to the flashing light, however, Valyn realized that whatever they were looking at, it wasn’t Ashk’lan. The light seemed to have come from a saddle in the distant ridgeline. There were no buildings, not even small ones. No one would build that high, not even these ’Shael-spawned monks. You’d have to spend all your time hauling water. But then, what was it Gwenna had seen? His pulse quickened as they passed overhead.

There were troops, he realized, maybe a dozen of them, scurrying over what seemed to be a makeshift camp. Yurl, he thought at first. Only Yurl didn’t command nearly as many men. Did Shaleel send more than one Wing?

Gwenna was gesturing vigorously, and he waved her off before she felt the need to drive that elbow into his ribs once more.

“I see them!”

Now that he had something specific to focus on, he fished the long lens out of his pack and trained it on the group. The figures, antlike to the natural eye, leapt into startling detail and precision, the rising sun on their armor sharp enough to touch. Aedolians, he realized with a fierce smile. Sanlitun must have dispatched two groups when he learned of the plot. The ones who had come to rescue Valyn had been slaughtered on their ship before they arrived, but it looked as though the contingent to protect Kaden had won through. Valyn had no idea what in Ae’s name was going on down there, no idea where Ashk’lan was, where Kaden was, but one thing was clear—he wouldn’t be alone in his fight against Yurl’s Wing. The delegation was sure to know the location of Ashk’lan—it was probably quite close by. Valyn and his Wing could fly ahead, secure Kaden, and wait for the guardsmen to arrive.