Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(56)

“So much for protecting the innocent people of Annur.”

Valyn swallowed a curse. All eyes were on him now, furtive, feral glances over the rims of tankards, calculating stares from the far end of the room. The whole thing was horseshit. They’d come to the Boat to get answers out of Juren, to learn something about the conspiracy to kill Valyn, to try to thwart a plot to overthrow the entire f*cking empire. Evidently all it took to knock them off the scent was a sailor’s whore with a sob story. In fact, once you started thinking about plots, Rianne’s sudden, unexpected appearance looked pretty suspicious. He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again.

Quarrel if you must, Hendran wrote, but do so out of sight. Open division emboldens a foe.

Valyn had no idea what to make of the girl’s sudden arrival, but arguing about it with Ha Lin in the middle of a crowded tavern seemed like a poor way to proceed. Juren wasn’t going anywhere with his busted leg. Any secrets about the collapse of Manker’s would still be there to uncover a day later, a week later. There’s time, he thought to himself.

Besides, Lin had a point. Assuming Rianne was telling the truth, she, like Valyn, had lost family. She, like Valyn, wanted answers. Unlike Valyn, however, she was no Kettral. She lacked the tools to solve her own mystery, lacked the training to rectify a wrong. The memory of the corpses from Manker’s came back to him, bodies broken and bloated with water. Whatever else was going on, the Kettral were supposed to protect people, to guard citizens and defend the helpless. That, as much as the swords and the birds, was why Valyn had stepped onto the boat eight years earlier.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked warily.

*

The room was a cramped garret on the fourth story of a tall, narrow building next to the harbor. A rickety staircase spiraled up tightly, the ceiling so low Valyn had to crouch, boards so warped and twisted that each time they groaned beneath his weight he wondered if the whole thing was going to crumble, dumping him into the cellar. If someone wanted to kill me, he thought grimly, this is the place to do it. The sun had set while they were still in the Black Boat, and inside the building the only light came from Rianne’s small storm lantern, a weak, flickering flame that did little more than carve furtive, jerking shadows from the darkness.

Valyn didn’t like the feel of that darkness. For all that Hull was the patron god of the Kettral, for all the midnight training missions, for all the blindfolded practice assembling and breaking down arbalests and munitions, the close, claustrophobic dark of the stairwell felt alien and unfriendly. Shadows were supposed to be allies of the soldier, but this inky black was menacing and palpable—a cloak for any would-be assassin.

He glanced over his shoulder at Rianne. The girl had practically dragged them down the dusty street, but as they approached the building she grew suddenly reluctant, as though overwhelmed with dread at the thought of what waited above.

“What is this place?” Valyn asked her, trying to be gentle, trying to dampen his own apprehension.

She scrubbed a tear away. “It’s nothing.”

“Who owns it?”

“No one. Used to be a boarding house, but it’s been abandoned better’n four years now.”

“And your sister was here?” he asked, confused. “What was she doing?”

Rianne dropped her red-rimmed eyes. “We took ’em here, sometimes,” she mumbled. “The men.”

Valyn frowned. “Why didn’t you just take them home?”

Rianne stopped on the stairs ahead of him, and turned until the lantern was shining directly into his eyes. He could smell her cheap perfume, and underneath, a sharper, more desperate smell of fear, hunger, exhaustion. “Would you?” she asked dully.

They climbed the remainder of the stairs in silence. As they neared the garret, Valyn noticed a new smell. It was the same as on the ship, the same as on every battlefield he’d ever studied, only those bodies had all been outside, washed by the rain and bleached by the sun before he got a look at them. As Lin shoved open the rickety door, the cloying, pent-up scent of death and rot threatened to choke him, and he stopped for a second, forcing down the bile in his throat. Rianne had started sobbing again.

“It’s fine,” he said. “You don’t need to come in with us. Why don’t you wait downstairs?”

She nodded feebly, handed him the lantern, and turned back into the darkness.

Once Valyn stepped into the cramped, peeling attic, he was glad he’d sent her away. There was only one body, but the sight was as disturbing as any tableau of battlefield carnage. Someone had stripped the murdered girl of her clothes—they were tossed in an untidy heap in the corner—and then hung her by her wrists from the low rafters. The corpse had bloated and rot had set in badly, but Amie looked as though she had been even younger than her sister—maybe sixteen, blond, pale, probably pretty. Festering red gashes ran the length of her slender torso, her arms, her legs, all deep enough to paint her skin with runnels of blood, but none severe enough to kill quickly. Tightening flesh curled back from the wounds. The rope groaned as she twisted, moved by some slight, unseen breeze.