Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(206)

It feels good, Valyn realized, some part of his brain recoiling at the thought even as he bared his teeth in a snarl and stepped forward.

“Who’s behind the plot?” he demanded.

“If I tell you, you’ll kill me,” Yurl replied, retreating through the darkness, his voice tight and desperate.

With one quick, clean motion, Valyn lashed out. He felt the steel bite, severing flesh, then tendon, then bone, and half a heartbeat later, Yurl screamed and a sword clattered to the rocky ground. His wrist, Valyn thought, nodding to himself. There was blood on the air now, Valyn realized, inhaling deeply—sharp, coppery blood.

“I’m going to kill you anyway,” he said, taking another step forward.

“All right,” Yurl gasped. His other blade fell to the rock. “All right. You win. I surrender.”

“I don’t want you to surrender,” Valyn replied. “I want you to tell me who’s behind the plot.”

He sniffed the air, turned his cheek to the darkness to feel the breeze waft over his skin, then lashed out with his own sword once more, slicing clean through the youth’s other wrist. Somewhere far in the back of his mind, Hendran was arguing for tactical calm and useful prisoners, while even further back, other voices, his father, his mother, mouthed words like mercy, and decency. Valyn silenced them. His parents were dead now, and so was Hendran. Ha Lin had played by the rules, and she’d been humiliated, beaten, and murdered for her trouble. Mercy and decency were fine words, but they had no place here in the darkness, alone with his cornered quarry.

Yurl let out a long, agonized cry, the keening of a trapped and desperate animal.

“You can’t kill me!” he sobbed. “You can’t kill me. Not if you want to know who’s behind what happened here. You have to keep me alive!”

“We’ll keep Ut alive,” Valyn growled, but as the words left his lips, he realized the sound of fighting behind him had disappeared. Where steel had echoed off steel, he could hear only the vast sweep of wind over snow and stone. Someone was dead. Valyn sniffed the air. Pyrre was moving toward him, the scent of her hair light on the night breeze. Balendin, Adiv, and now Ut, all gone. Yurl looked like the last prisoner available to them, but though Valyn knew it made sense, the blood coursed cold and dark through his veins. He didn’t want a prisoner.

“No one else knows the whole thing,” Yurl moaned. He was on his knees now, sobbing desperately. “Please. You have to keep me alive.”

“Tell me what you know,” Valyn said, “and I’ll take you back to the Eyrie for justice.” Another lie, tripping off his lips like song.

“All right. It’s a plot … it’s…”

“I know it’s a plot,” Valyn replied. “Who is behind it?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know his name. But he’s Csestriim. I know that. He’s Csestriim.”

Valyn paused. The Csestriim were ancient history, the last of them slaughtered more than a thousand years earlier. Yurl’s claim was insanity, and yet … groveling in the dirt, his hands lopped from his wrists, he couldn’t be lying.

“What else?” Valyn pressed.

“I don’t know anything else,” Yurl moaned. “That’s it. That’s all I know. Please, Valyn. I’m begging you.”

Eyes still closed, Valyn stepped closer, close enough to press the point of his dagger against Yurl’s gut. The youth had pissed himself, and the scent of blood and urine mingled, sharp and acrid in the cool night air.

“You’re begging me?” he asked, voice little more than a whisper.

“I’m begging you,” Yurl sobbed.

“What about Ha Lin? Did she beg you?”

“I’m sorry about Lin. It’s not what you think. It was never what you thought.”

“Did she beg you?” Valyn demanded, pushing the knife forward until it just broke the skin.

“I don’t know! I can’t remember!” He pawed at Valyn with the bloody stumps, but Valyn brushed them away.

“Not good enough,” he ground out, driving the knife a hair deeper. “Down in the Hole … did you help Balendin kill her?”

“I didn’t,” Yurl babbled. “I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t—”

Valyn shoved the knife a little more. “Still not good enough.”

“Sweet Eira’s mercy, Valyn,” Yurl wailed, stretching out his lopped arms hopelessly, “what’s good enough for you? What’s fucking good enough?”

Valyn considered the question. What’s good enough? Once, he would have known the answer. Before his father was murdered. Before he climbed the stairs to the airless attic where Amie’s body hung. Before he carried Lin from the dark mouth of Hull’s Hole. Justice? Revenge? He shook his head. Now …