Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(54)

Juren sat by the bar, his splinted leg propped on a chair, a half-empty glass of wine beside him, and a half-full jug beside that.

“Mind if we join you?” Valyn asked, pulling up a chair.

The man darted them a bloodshot glare. He opened his mouth as though to suggest that he did mind, then took another look at their blacks and the Kettral-issue blades at their belts and thought better of it. He scowled. “Suit yourself.”

“Juren, right?” Lin asked brightly, settling herself on the chair with a grim smile.

The man grunted.

“You used to work for Manker, didn’t you?” she went on. “You were there the day the place collapsed.”

“S’how I got this busted leg,” he replied, waving a hand at the limb. “Manker bit it along with his shithole. Bastard owed me two weeks of pay.”

Valyn shook his head in commiseration. “Bad luck, friend. Bad luck. Listen, we just got paid—why don’t you let us top off that jug for you?”

Juren brightened momentarily, then narrowed his eyes. “What d’you want to drink with me for? I seen you often enough. I even seen you over at Manker’s the day it dropped. You Kettral are usually too good to rub elbows with the likes of me.”

Valyn suppressed a grimace. “Not our decision, friend. Command’s got regulations. Security and all that.”

Juren snorted. “Right. Security ’n’ all that.” Despite having served as Manker’s hired muscle, he didn’t look like he thought all that much of security.

Lin took the newly filled wine jug and topped off the man’s glass before filling two more.

“I remember you now,” she said, nodding as though at the memory. “You made it to the doorway first.”

The man edged back on his stool, putting a little more space between them.

“You made it to the doorway,” she continued, voice deceptively level, “and then, instead of helping get anyone else out … you jumped.”

“What are you, the town constables?” he asked, licking his lips furtively. “I came to Hook t’get away from this shit.”

“By ‘this shit,’” Valyn said, leaning in until he could smell the sour wine on the man’s breath, “I can only assume you mean things like courage and human decency.”

“Don’t lecture me,” Juren snarled, pushing him back with a meaty hand. “I don’t get paid no tall stacks of gold to risk my life. I did what I had to do. That’s why I’m alive.”

“Oh no,” Lin said, airily. “We’re not going to lecture you. We’re just going to ask you a few questions.”

“Fuck your questions.”

She pursed her lips and looked over at Valyn.

Valyn was rapidly tiring of the man’s attitude. There were faster ways to get answers out of a drunken brawler than plying him with wine, and he and Lin had spent years mastering just about all of them.

“Look, friend,” he began, tapping conspicuously at his belt knife. “The questions are going to be easy. Don’t make them complicated.”

“Actually,” Lin went on with a vicious smile, “I don’t mind if you make them complicated.”

Juren scowled, then spat over his shoulder onto the floor. “What questions?”

“Did you see any other Kettral in the tavern that day?” Valyn asked. “Maybe in the morning, or just before we got there?”

“It was just you two,” Juren grumbled. “You two and that slick, gold-haired bastard. The one that broke the wineglass.”

Valyn considered the claim. Sami Yurl was perfectly capable of plotting, of murder, and he had been in the alehouse. On the other hand, Yurl was no leach. Maybe he was wrapped up in the thing somehow, but it didn’t seem possible that he’d brought down Manker’s all on his own.

“No one in the morning?” Lin pressed. “No other Kettral?”

The thug wrinkled his brow as though fighting through a haze of wine. “Yeah. Yeah, there was someone else—short, crop-haired girl. Wore the same blacks as the rest of you lot. Eyes like nails. She didn’t stay long.”

“Looked about fifteen years old?”

“How’n Hull’s name should I know?” the man snapped. “She barely talked.”

“Annick,” Valyn said, glancing over at Lin.

She grimaced and nodded. Annick Frencha was the best sniper among the cadets, one of the best snipers on the Islands, despite the fact that she had yet to pass Hull’s Trial. The girl was a mystery. She seemed to have no need or desire for human contact, and despite her size, she was every bit as brutal as Yurl or Balendin. Valyn had watched her working with her bow once in the fields to the north of the compound. She had shot a rabbit through the foot at a hundred paces, and the creature was shrieking—a terrified, unearthly sound—as it tried to drag itself to safety. Annick cocked her head to the side before loosing a second arrow. This one transfixed the rabbit’s back leg. Hitting the creature at all at that distance was impressive, but Valyn started to suspect that she was missing its heart on purpose. “Why don’t you kill it?” he’d asked. Annick had looked at him with those icy eyes of hers. “I want a moving target,” she replied, nocking another arrow to the string. “If it’s dead, it doesn’t move.” Valyn had little trouble believing that Annick would destroy a tavern and the people inside it just to accomplish her objective. But then she, like Yurl, was no leach.