The Emperor's Blades(20)

Rallen leaned back in his chair and squinted at him for a long time before nodding slowly. “You did. You did step out of line. You’ve got to get it through that dense head of yours that you’re not in charge here. You. Are. Not. In. Charge.” He smiled. “Third watch for a month, I think, should be adequate to convey the lesson.”





6

“We’re going to regret this in the morning,” Valyn said, peering into the depths of his tankard.

“We’ve been drunk before,” Lin replied, waving over Salia, the serving girl, with a free hand, “and with less cause. Your father just died. No one expects you to be swimming circuits of the Islands.”

Your father just died. Even a week later, the words still landed like a sharp fist to the gut. Lin wasn’t being cruel; she, like the rest of the Kettral, had long ago been trained to speak in the clear, crisp periods appropriate to combat. Talking round and round a point was like wearing lace into battle.

“I think Rallen would be happy to see me doing just that,” Valyn said, settling his elbow on the table and his forehead against the heel of his hand.

Lin frowned, tossed back the remainder of her ale, then frowned again. “Rallen’s a shit-sucking turd. It was bad form, giving you third watch at a time like this.”

“I volunteered. It was the only way to get out of his office without something worse.”

“Aside from avoiding his office in the first place.”

“I had to try,” Valyn snapped. “It’ll take an imperial delegation at least two months to get to Kaden: a few weeks at sea and then twice that riding north from the Bend. They should have sent a Kettral Wing.”

There was more venom in his voice than he’d intended. After a week of third watch, days training for the Trial, nights watching his own back, mourning his father silently, and the constant, nagging worry about Kaden, he’d taken the first free hour to catch the boat across the sound to Hook, made the short walk along the alley to Manker’s, and polished off five tankards of ale before Lin even walked in the door. It was just as all the Kettral said: You went to Hook to escape your problems and came back with a dozen more.

While the Eyrie kept a close eye on Hook, they didn’t control it in the same way as they did the other islands. In fact, sometimes it seemed as though no one controlled the place. There was no mayor or town guard, no merchant council, and no local aristocracy. Lin described it as a “hive of ’Shael-spawned pirates,” and Valyn supposed she wasn’t far wrong. Those who ended up on the island were all desperate—people hiding from mountains of debt, or death warrants, or some other kind of pain. He always got the impression they would have run farther, but there was no place farther to run.

Like most of the buildings on the island, Manker’s was built out over Buzzard’s Bay, the entire thing held up by tarred timbers sunk in the silt of the harbor bottom. On the outside, the tavern was painted a garish red to compete with the yellow and bilious green buildings flanking it; inside, however, it was low, and dark, and sagging, the kind of place where people held their purses close, kept their voices down, and sat with their backs to the wall. It suited Valyn’s mood just fine.

“Kaden will be all right,” Lin said, extending a tentative hand and resting it on Valyn’s.

“There’s no reason to believe that,” he growled. “According to the Flea, my father was murdered. Score upon score of Aedolians plus the ’Shael-spawned Palace Guard, and someone still managed to kill him. Kaden’s in some ’Kent-kissing monastery. What’s to keep someone from getting to him?”

“The fact that he is in that monastery,” Lin replied, her voice level. “He’s safer tucked away there than he would be anywhere inside the empire. It’s probably why he was sent there in the first place. No one even knows where it is.”

Valyn took a swig of his ale, then hesitated. For the past week he’d been wrestling with himself over whether to tell Lin about the murdered Aedolian, about the plot the man had revealed. He had no question about her loyalty—of all the cadets on the Islands, he knew Lin the best. She’d covered his back in scores of training missions, saving him a dozen broken bones at the least, and he’d hauled her out of some tight spots as well. If there was anyone he could trust, it was Ha Lin, but then, according to Hendran, secrecy admitted no half measures. The fewer people who knew a thing, the safer it was.

“What?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Nothing.”

“You can lie to me if you want, but you’re gnawing on something.”