Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(77)

“We’ll figure it out,” he said softly, trying to convince himself as much as Ha Lin. “We will.”

She slid over onto the bench beside him, and for a while the two sat side by side, hands entwined, bodies separate. Valyn could feel the warmth of her, but she kept apart, rigid in the darkness.

“There’s something else,” she said finally. “I found Balendin outside the barracks. Or … he found me.”

Valyn tensed, but Lin went on before he could respond.

“It was strange. He seemed nervous, almost frightened. Said he wanted to tell me something about Sami Yurl.”

“Yurl?” Valyn asked, baffled. “What was it?”

“That’s the thing. He wouldn’t say. Told me it was something I had to see, but that it was important.”

Valyn frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“What’s to like? Still, if he knows something about Yurl, something incriminating … Whoever killed Amie didn’t necessarily do it alone.”

“Yurl and Annick?” Valyn tried to make sense of the unlikely pair. Sami Yurl had his own cadre of nasty followers among the cadets, but the sniper had never been among them.

“If Balendin discovered something like that,” Lin pressed, “a murder—”

“He’d go straight to command.”

“Unless there’s a reason he can’t.”

Valyn puffed out a deep breath. He was weary, he realized, weary beyond the simple, honest exhaustion that came with a long month of training. The constant searching, guessing, and second-guessing, the glancing over the shoulder, the doubting and distrust were wearing him to a blunt edge. If one apple was rotten, you had to assume they all were, but that was a good way to starve.

“All right,” he said, knuckling his eyes, “but why would he come to you?”

“Maybe he knows we found Amie’s body. And he knows I’m more likely to listen than you are.”

Valyn snorted. “That’s debatable. You’ve got a shorter wick than I do when it comes to that temper of yours.”

“Maybe he just hates me a little bit less. You have a way of attracting … resentment.”

“So after all these years as Yurl’s minion, he wants to make nice? Wants to quit the atrep’s son and make friends with us?”

“Maybe,” Lin replied. “Pounding cadets in the ring is one thing. Hunting a whore and cutting her to pieces in an attic is something else. Maybe Balendin does have some decency.” Her tone suggested she didn’t find that very likely.

Decency. It was a tricky word for men and women trained to stab people in the back.

“Then we’ll both go see what he’s got to show you,” Valyn concluded. “If he can show it to one person, he can show it to two. I’ll promise to listen.”

“No,” Lin said. “It’s tomorrow morning. During your sniper test.”

Valyn cursed. “Well, tell him we can’t see it in the morning.”

“I don’t think it’s a thing,” Lin replied. “I think it’s an event. He wants me to see Yurl do something.”

Valyn clenched, then unclenched his fist.

“Where?” he asked, the question bitter in his mouth. He didn’t trust Balendin, didn’t trust this sudden crisis of conscience. For eight years, the leach had baited and battered just about every cadet on the Islands aside from Sami Yurl and his coterie. Where there was room to cheat, he cheated. Where there was space to lie, he lied. The idea of Lin going off with him somewhere in order to watch some secret event made Valyn’s stomach tighten. Of course, the blade cut both ways. If Balendin was treacherous, he could betray Yurl as easily as anyone else.

“Where?” he asked again.

“The west bluffs.”

The west bluffs comprised the sere, broken terrain toward the northwest corner of the island: some scrub, some thorns, and a good view out over the center of Qarsh. There were a few nesting seabirds on the ocean side, and a handful of interesting shells dropped by the gulls up on the cliffs. That was about it.

“What could he possibly want to show you up there?”

“That,” Lin replied, exasperation creeping into her voice, “is what I’m going to find out. Don’t worry, Val,” she added, softening her tone and squeezing his hand. “I’ll bring my real blades, and I’ll be careful.”