Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(78)

Valyn blew out a slow breath. “You’re just about a mile from the sniper test, up there,” he said. The thought calmed him somewhat, and he realized he’d half-expected Lin to tell him the meeting was in an abandoned house over on Hook. It didn’t make any real difference, of course. Something could go wrong up on the bluffs as well as in a cramped garret, but somehow the fact that Lin would still be on Qarsh, that she would be, in fact, only a few minutes’ hard run from the sniper range itself, helped his stomach to relax.

“All right,” he said finally. “’Shael knows I don’t trust that bastard, but it’s not like you’re a child.” She hadn’t moved her hand from his, and he found himself suddenly aware of its weight, of the gentle pressure of her callused fingers. They were alone in the hall, had been since Laith left, and for the first time since she had joined him on the bench he looked over at her, trying to make out the slender lines of her face in the darkness. “I’m just frightened for you,” he concluded quietly. There was more to say, a lot more, but he didn’t have the words.

Lin considered him for what seemed like a long time. Then, with no warning, she leaned over to press her lips against his. Her kiss was warm, and rough, and soft all at the same time. Valyn had bedded women before, but only whores over on Hook, and the experience had been somewhat uninspiring. This … this was something altogether different. After what seemed like a very long time, Lin pulled away.

“I’m sorry, I … I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Valyn replied, baffled but suddenly happy, his weariness stripped away, at least for the moment. “I should have done it a long time ago.”

Lin grinned, then stood and cuffed him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll see what Balendin has to show me. You just try not to let Annick mess up that fine face of yours too badly in tomorrow’s test.”

Before Valyn could respond, she turned on her heel. He was still smiling when the door closed behind her. She couldn’t be his, of course, not in any of the traditional ways. Kettral never married, and the few clandestine relationships that took place on the Islands were carefully concealed, buried deep enough that they would never interfere with training or war. Still, there was a possible life, a future, in which they flew on the same Wing, worked with each other every day, even grew old alongside each other, provided neither of them took an arrow in the back. It wasn’t much, but for a little while, Valyn let himself drift with the fantasy.

Then the bell rang for third watch, jolting him from his thoughts, and the darkness and silence settled down again, heavy as the water that had almost drowned him just days earlier.





18





The sun hung high and bright in the sky, which was bad. It gave the spotters the best chance of finding him. The day was still, which was bad; a light ocean breeze would have obscured any errant sound, any clatter of small rocks as his body scraped over the earth. The day was hotter than normal for the spring, which was also bad. Sweat dripped from his brow, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He longed to wipe it away, but wasted motion was anathema to a sniper. Instead, he blinked twice, squinted, and inched ahead along the small furrow. The furrow, too, was bad.

Sniper contests could take place anywhere on the Islands, but the trainers tended to favor a section near the northern coast of Qarsh, where the land sloped abruptly upward to terminate in limestone bluffs that plunged down into the waves. Hundreds of fractures rent the ground into tiny fissures and ravines, as though Pta, the Lord of Chaos, had hefted the entire island in a massive hand and then shattered it on the surface of the sea.

Atop the bluffs themselves perched the spotters’ platform, a raised wooden construction sporting a bronze bell the size of a man’s head. The goal of the exercise was straightforward: sneak close enough to shoot the bell, then sneak out. In practice, it was nearly impossible. Eyrie trainers manned the platform, sweeping the surrounding ground with their long lenses, waiting for the cadets to make a mistake, to slip into the open for a moment.

The hearty native scrub and broken folds of earth provided the only cover, and for Valyn’s first three years, he hadn’t come within a half mile of the platform, let alone close enough to take a shot at the bell. Recently, however, he’d found more success.

Of course, success was a double-edged blade with the Kettral. Success meant that the drills were getting too easy, which meant, in turn, that the drills were about to get a whole lot harder. It was one thing to skulk through the scrub alone, taking as much time as was necessary to work up close to the bell. It was another thing entirely to do so at the same time as someone else, taking care to avoid their eyes as well as those of the spotters, and always trying to eke out a little more speed to try to get to the bell first. Worst of all was squaring off against Annick. The young sniper was so good that for the past year, she’d been going against older cadets. Now, though, as Valyn’s cohort approached Hull’s Trial themselves, there were no older cadets.