Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(74)

“Have something to do with what?” the youth asked.

“My bow,” Lin supplied smoothly. “Cracked in the middle of my last sniper test. Valyn thinks someone sabotaged it.”

Laith eyed one, then the other, then shrugged. “Trial’s coming up. It’s going to be people rather than bows cracking before the whole thing’s finished.”

“Provided we make it to the ’Kent-kissing Trial,” Valyn added, turning to Lin. “All I’m saying is to go to the list. Then tell me if you don’t think Annick looks bloody as a slaughterhouse floor.”

“All right,” Lin said, her eyes bright in the lamplight. “Let’s go to the list.”

The Kettral were great believers in lists. The soldiers had lists for everything—checking over a bird before flight, setting a demolitions charge, boarding a ship—everything. Valyn could hear old Georg the Tanner’s voice droning on in the lecture hall: People make mistakes. Soldiers make mistakes. Everyone else on this ’Shael-spawned island is filling your tiny little heads with ideas about spontaneity, adaptation, thinking on the fly. He spat. Thinking on the fly is a good way to make mistakes. Lists do not make mistakes. Georg’s voice could put a roomful of cadets to sleep in a matter of heartbeats, but the man had flown missions well into his sixties, and Valyn tried to listen to what he had to say. You fools want to know how something gets added to the list? A soldier dies. Then we figure out why. Then we change the list. So learn the f*cking list.

Unfortunately, there was no list, no set of steps for ferreting out a traitor and a murderer, but a jolt of logical thinking couldn’t hurt.

“First,” Valyn began, raising a finger, “we know that Amie was going to meet a Kettral the morning she was murdered. Second, she was meeting that person in Manker’s. Third, according to Juren, the only Kettral in Manker’s that morning was Annick. Fourth, Annick is a cold-blooded bitch.”

“Your fourth observation seems more emotional than analytical,” Lin pointed out.

“Fifth, the way Amie was killed suggests both Kettral professionalism and a complete absence of moral sentiment. Sixth, that strange bowline shows up in both the garret where Amie was killed and the boat where I was thrown overboard today. And seventh, Annick tries to drown me a day and a half after we find the body and start asking questions.”

Oh, Valyn thought to himself, and finally, there’s a plot to kill my entire family and take over the throne.

“When you put it like that, she doesn’t exactly come out looking like a priestess of Eira,” Laith observed.

“All right,” Lin said, nodding hear head wearily. “I agree. It looks bad for Annick. But it still doesn’t make any sense. Why would she want to kill Amie? And why in such a horrible way?”

“That’s the one I can’t answer.”

“I suppose sheer unbuckled cruelty isn’t reason enough?” Laith asked.

Valyn frowned. Maybe he was overthinking it. Even if Annick had killed Amie, maybe the murder had nothing to do with the plot against him. It seemed plausible that the sniper might just truss up someone and kill her for the practice. Only killing a whore who wasn’t much more than a girl wouldn’t be much practice. And it still didn’t explain the knot that had almost drowned him earlier in the day.

“I just think we need more information,” Lin said.

Valyn nodded slowly. “And I know one place to start looking.”

*

In theory, rummaging through someone’s trunk was easy. Each of the five barracks was simply one long room, and the cadets weren’t permitted locks. The problem was, someone was always in the barracks, just back from a night run or catching a quick nap before Blood Time. Lin would have raised eyes and turned heads if she just started rifling through the sniper’s belongings, and so for a few days Valyn let the worry eat at his gut, tried to focus on his training, on his studies, and the upcoming Trial. Late each night, he would meet up with Laith, Gent, and Lin in their corner of the mess hall and exchange pointless observations and suspicions, marking time until Lin could find a way into Annick’s trunk.

On this particular night, however, Lin was late. Valyn noted the moon through the window, measured it against the horizon, and shook his head.

“Calm down,” Laith said. “Lin’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Valyn replied, but he couldn’t stop drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Ha Lin outweighed Annick and she was the better fighter if it came to fists and knives. On the other hand, most confrontations were decided by one simple rule: The person to strike first was the one to walk away, and Valyn worried that, in the crucial moment, Lin might hesitate. Annick would not.