“I just cannot tell you how much I regret losing such delectable emotion,” Balendin said, then shrugged. “But they have to go sometime, and with the hate rolling off you, I still feel like I could rip the top off this mountain.”
“What did you do to them?” Valyn demanded, sickened by the possibilities.
The leach shrugged. “Nothing permanent. Not yet. I like to give Yurl the illusion that he controls the Wing, and he sometimes has some … unusual ideas about military protocol. Especially when it comes to female captives. Hard to say which one will give him the most pleasure. This delightfully treacherous young bitch,” he said, indicating Triste with a jerk of his head, “is clearly the best catch, but then, there’s always something satisfying about fucking an angry woman into sobbing submission.”
Kaden took half a step forward, the flatbow aimed directly at Balendin’s chest.
“Who are you?” he asked. They were the first words he’d spoken all night.
Valyn stared. If his brother was frightened to be facing a Kettral-trained leach, he didn’t show it. He looked at Balendin the way a butcher might consider a cut of meat, as though wondering how best to start carving. The veterans back on the Islands were cool, collected, but this … it was as though Kaden had never even heard of fear.
“I,” the leach responded, evidently enjoying his moment, “am Balendin Ainhoa, Kettral leach serving on the Wing of one Sami Yurl, himself serving the Emperor of Annur, Kaden hui’Malkeenian.” He winked. “I guess that’s you. At least, for a little while longer. I imagine we’ll have some trouble deciding whether you watch your brother die, or whether he watches you, but, as they say, it all works out in the end.”
If the threat bothered Kaden, he didn’t show it. Those bright, calm eyes just bored into the leach, and for the first time since the start of the showdown, Valyn saw Balendin’s confidence falter.
“As I’m sure your brother will tell you,” the leach continued, “I’ve developed something of a reputation for killing people slowly, strip by strip.”
“We all have our hobbies,” Kaden replied. He could have been discussing farming techniques.
Balendin grimaced.
It’s not working, Valyn realized. Kaden doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel the fear, the anger. He had no idea how it was possible, but his brother didn’t seem to feel anything.
Then, in a flash, he understood what had to happen. “Kaden!” he began, “you have to—,” but his brother had already pivoted toward him, drawing that short knife of his, raising it in a quick motion as Balendin started to shout. Valyn met his brother’s eyes, those icy, distant flames, as Kaden closed on him. He doesn’t feel love, either, he realized as Kaden hammered the knife down with a savage thrust straight at Valyn’s head, or sorrow, or regret.…
* * *
Kaden glanced down at his brother’s body, bleeding and crumpled at his feet. Deep in the vaniate, everything the Shin taught him seemed so much easier, more natural, as though this final skill enabled all the rest. He had wanted to know the leach’s well and so he had cast his mind into the youth’s head, abandoning himself to the beshra’an as he listened to the conversation hum around him. It hadn’t been difficult then, to determine that he drew his power from emotion. It almost seemed obvious. Then it was just a matter of knocking Valyn unconscious. Some distant part of his mind hoped he hadn’t killed him, but that, too, would serve the purpose.
Kaden raised his eyes to the leach once again.
“I’m going to murder you,” Balendin panted, eyes desperate, darting.
Kaden remembered what it felt like to be afraid, but only vaguely, the way you remember a story from your childhood, events so distant, they may not have really occurred.
“Unlikely,” he replied, hefting his flatbow and leveling it at the youth’s chest. He’d never used the weapon before, but the saama’an of Valyn’s mimed instruction filled his head, and he released the catch and slid his finger onto the trigger.
“Even without my well, I’m still Kettral. You’re just a fucking monk. You don’t know shit about—”
Kaden squinted and pulled the trigger. The mechanism worked as he had anticipated. The bolt tore into the leach, and with a shriek of rage and pain, Balendin Ainhoa tumbled from the low ledge into the vast darkness of the night.
Kaden turned back to the crumpled form of his brother, knelt down, and pressed a finger firmly to his neck. He hadn’t known how hard he had to strike—he’d never knocked someone out with the pommel of his knife before—and so he’d erred on the side of caution, hitting him as hard as he could.