Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(197)

“Aaah,” Balendin said, closing his eyes in contentment. “That’s more like it.” He leaned closer to Valyn. “You know,” he continued, “it’s amazing. I think you feel more powerfully about your friend’s suffering than she did.”

“Balendin,” Yurl barked, turning from the Aedolian and gesturing urgently. “Get over here, there’s something—” He squinted into the darkness. “There’s someone coming.”

The leach straightened, a momentary look of irritation flashing across his face.

“Who?”

Yurl shook his head. “How the f*ck do I know? The sun set an hour ago. Just one person, but I want you over here, ready.”

Valyn tensed against his bonds. The makeshift camp was good, but it wasn’t invulnerable: one Wing of Kettral, a score of Aedolians under Ut’s command. A small force—fifty men, say—could probably overwhelm them. Fifty men or one veteran Wing of Kettral. Valyn’s mind spun out a dozen scenarios—the Flea and Adaman Fane had caught up to them finally, a contingent of loyal Aedolains had tracked them through the mountains, a mob of monks from another local order … Fool, he hissed to himself. Quit dreaming and focus on what’s here, what’s real. The approaching figure was more likely to be one of Ut’s men than anything else, a returning scout or a messenger from the main body of his force.

The Aedolian commander, however, didn’t seem to think so. With a few barked orders, he set men on either side of the pass, bows trained on the darkness below, while Yurl and Balendin set themselves directly in the path of whoever approached. Yurl drew one of his two blades and dropped into a half guard. Balendin spun a dagger between his fingers, affecting calm. Valyn wasn’t fooled—most of the soldiers were wound tight as bowstrings, ready for Ananshael himself to stride into their camp.

The person who walked out of the darkness, however, was not Ananshael, not an Aedolian, not a monk, not a Kettral with bared blades. She was a vision, a dream of perfection—some kind of goddess who had lost her way through the heavens to stride into the slender compass of the flickering fire. Her gossamer robe was torn to tatters, but even that served to accentuate her beauty, the rent cloth exposing the hint of a hip, the silken line of her thigh. Valyn stared. He should have been thinking about Balendin, about his Wing, about how to use the slight distraction to engineer an escape, and yet, for a few long breaths all he could do was marvel, caught up in the spell of those violet eyes, that cascading black hair, the scent of jasmine mingled with fresh blood.

She’s been hurt, he realized, the thought stirring a deep, unexpected anger in him. Someone had carved a long, slender slice down her cheek, narrowly missing her eye. The wound would heal up fine—he’d seen worse in standard training—but there was something about this girl that made any injury seem like desecration, a sacrilege, as though someone had chiseled a gouge across a priceless statue.

Ut had his broadblade out of the sheath in a flash while Yurl drew his other sword. Why they needed them, Valyn had no idea. The young woman was a head shorter than the shortest of the Aedolians and slender as a willow. She was unarmed, her hands extended in supplication, and tears poured down her cheeks.

“Please,” she sobbed. “Please. I’m sorry!”

“No closer,” Ut said, scanning the darkness beyond her with wary eyes. She had come from the east, from the vast gulf into which Kaden had presumably disappeared earlier in the day. “On your knees.”

She dropped, heedless of the rough stones. “I’m sorry!” she moaned. “They forced me to follow them. I didn’t want to! I’m sorry!”

“Well,” said a new voice, rich and almost amused. “Triste, Triste, Triste. My lost little girl returns at last.” From behind a leaning boulder, a man with a bloodred blindfold wrapped around his eyes sauntered into the light.

“Adiv,” she gasped. “I did it! I did what you said. I brought him to bed, I was touching him, undressing him, I was going to—” She shook her head helplessly. “—but then it all started, the killing and the fire, and he just dragged me along, he and that other monk.”

The blindfolded man—some sort of Annurian councillor, if Valyn hadn’t forgotten the rank—crossed to her and raised her chin almost tenderly.

“And you followed him for two days,” he said, shaking his head. “You are a lovely creature, my dear. Nothing would delight me more than believing this … tale of yours, but it strains credulity.”