“Why haven’t they taken her yet?” Valyn bellowed in Kaden’s ear. “I don’t care how good she is—one arrow and she’s down!”
Kaden shook his head. “They think Tan and I made it to the cave. They need to capture Pyrre alive, to question her.”
Kaden had taken the assassin at her word when she insisted that it was a lot trickier to capture a foe than to kill her. After all, Pyrre was the one getting either captured or killed. Valyn nodded, as if it all made sense.
He flicked a few quick signs to the dark-skinned youth on the far talon, and moments later, the bird dipped into a steep approach. The girl with the bow, she couldn’t have been much more than fifteen, was hanging out into the darkness—ever since Kaden first cut her loose, she seemed to have been aiming or shooting at something—and as they fell on the circle of soldiers from above, she drew and fired, drew and fired, three shots in quick succession, and three of the Kettral collapsed into the dust—dead so quickly, they never had time to clutch at their necks. I never saw a man die before last night, Kaden realized. I didn’t think it would be so easy.
Ut turned at the last moment, just in time for the arrow to glance off his breastplate, falling away into the darkness. The other youth, the Wing leader, dived into the darkness, and then the bird was upon them, shrieking an earsplitting cry, and Valyn was leaping free of the talons, rolling as he hit the ground, a knife in one hand, short sword in the other.
* * *
There hadn’t been much time for elaborate tactics, but the plan had seemed like a good one to Valyn: Take down the Wing’s sniper, flier, and demolitions man first, and then they could deal with the more conventional threats of Ut and Yurl. Valyn’s own Wing could have dropped, of course. It would be nice to have Laith and Annick at his back, but he liked having them in the air better; the altitude gave Annick a better range of attack. As his feet hit the ground, however, he realized the flaw: Ut and Yurl had fled outside the blazing light of the flares, into the darkness. The air support he had counted on was no good if the members of his Wing couldn’t see what was going on. He was on his own.
“That,” came a voice from behind, “is an exceptionally large bird you’ve got.”
Valyn spun to find himself face-to-face with the knife-wielding woman—Pyrre, Kaden had called her. Skullsworn. Valyn eyed the assassin, gauging her quickly. She was breathing heavily, and her clothes were sliced open in a dozen places—whether from this fight or something earlier, it was hard to tell—but she seemed strangely relaxed. The fact that Yurl hadn’t managed to take her spoke well for her abilities, that and the blood on her blades.
“They went that way,” she said, pointing with one of her long knives. “I’ve got a score to settle with the unpleasant gentleman in all the armor, but you’re welcome to kill the other one.”
Valyn considered the offer. Pyrre had helped Kaden, but he didn’t like the idea of relying on an assassin he’d never met before to guard his back. Of course, there wasn’t much to like, and every moment he delayed was a moment Yurl could be slipping farther away or honing an ambush. “All right,” Valyn replied, nodding warily. “Ut’s yours. Yurl’s mine. Just don’t fuck up.”
Pyrre smiled an easy smile. She didn’t look like a murderer. “I could have used that advice a few days ago, before we got ourselves chased into these miserable mountains.”
“Good luck,” he said.
“And with you,” Pyrre replied. “Be careful. That bastard is good.”
Valyn nodded grimly. For weeks now, for months, he’d been biding his time, waiting for just this opportunity, a chance to face Yurl one on one. So much the better that they had flown beyond imperial borders, past the aegis of law and the ambit of Annurian justice, into these unnamed peaks, where there were no trainers or regulations, no blunted blades or codes of conduct, no one to cry foul or stop the fight. It was just what Valyn had longed for, and yet the stark fact remained: Yurl was better with his blades. He was faster and he was stronger. When it was all settled, any blood on the ground was likely to be Valyn’s. It was folly to chase after him, and for a moment Valyn hesitated. He could go back for the rest of his Wing. The other man was alone now, on foot in hostile terrain with minimal provisions. It was pride and folly to pursue him alone. There is wisdom, Hendran wrote, in waiting.
But Valyn was through waiting. The man who had brutalized Ha Lin, who had tried to murder his Wing, to slaughter his brother, to end the Malkeenian line, was only a few paces away. Valyn had tried playing by the rules. For as long as he could remember, he’d tried to weigh his options, to think before acting, to make the wise choice. It had all ended in ashes: Lin dead, himself and his Wing traitors in exile. Yurl might kill him, but what did that matter? He would die eventually, either on the point of a blade or in his bed, and something inside him was stirring, a part of his mind older than conscious thought, quicker and more savage, whispering to him, rasping the same malevolent syllable over and over: death, death, death. Whether the death was his own or Sami Yurl’s no longer seemed to matter.