The Last Mortal Bond

47

From the top of the watchtower halfway along Annur’s old northern wall, Adare stared west. It was easier than looking north. There was nothing to the north now but burned-out wreckage, charred timbers crumbling under their own weight, backyard gardens buried beneath ash, the streets impassable, blocked by the crumbling hulks of shattered stores and stables, temples and taverns. The distinctions didn’t matter now. Whoever had lived, loved, and prayed in those spaces just days earlier was gone. Safely evacuated, hopefully. Maybe just dead, hung in one of the dozens of squares, or crushed beneath the weight of the burned-down buildings and their own stupid stubbornness.

Atop the wall, at least, the situation was different. Terial’s old fortification was a hive of activity: soldiers stacking crates of arrows and extra spears, masons laboring to repair cracks and rents, men dangling on ropes before and behind the wall, or standing on hastily erected scaffolding, or bent double in the middle of the walkway itself, slathering old stones with new mortar. Adare glanced up at the sky. According to the master mason in charge of the project, all the effort would come to nothing if the rain arrived before the mortar set, but there was nothing to be done. The Urghul wouldn’t wait for the rain.

As Adare studied the ongoing work for her makeshift command post atop the tallest of the towers, Nira came puffing up the stairs, followed by Kegellen and Lehav.

“Near as any of those assholes with the numbers can figure, there’s enough grain in the warehouses to last the city two weeks.”

Adare looked up at the clouds, considered the figure.

“’Course, we’ll have resupply,” the old woman went on. “More rice than wheat, but food’s food to a grumbling belly.”

“Sixty percent of that food came from north of the Neck,” Adare replied finally, “at least for Annur. Given what’s in the warehouses and the trickle that’ll keep coming up from the south, we can last three weeks.”

“Longer,” Lehav said. “A lot longer. Start the rations now.”

Adare turned to him. “I just burned down the homes and neighborhoods of a hundred thousand Annurian citizens. I’ve told them to live in warehouses and whorehouses and any other kind of fucking houses with enough space on the floor for a curled-up body. It’s astounding the city isn’t rioting already.”

“The Queen of the Streets has her thugs out,” Nira said. “They’re-”

“Encouraging calm,” Kegellen interjected. Unlike nearly everyone else on the wall, Adare included, she didn’t seem to be panting or sweating. The sky-blue silk of her robe fluttered lightly in the hot breeze. She patted her hair with a free hand, as though to check it had not fallen free of the elaborate pins and clips holding it up.

“And by encouraging calm, you mean killing people,” Adare said, pressing a hand to her forehead.

Kegellen winced elaborately, as though the words themselves pained her.

Nira just shrugged. “Sometimes ya gotta kill people to save ’em.”

“The grain…,” Lehav began again.

“The grain is fine,” Adare said, shaking her head. “If we all survive long enough to starve, I’ll count it a victory. The miserable fact is that this city is on the brink of extinction. We’re one eloquent, heartbroken mother away. One firebrand of a soldier who saw his family home torn down with his aged father inside. If one of those bastards starts making speeches in the streets, good speeches, we’ll have full-blown madness south of the wall, and even Kegellen can’t keep putting knives in them all.” She blew out a long breath. “We won’t need Balendin and the Urghul to kill us. By the time they show up, there’ll be nothing left of Annur but mud and blood.”

For once Nira had no response. She was staring down at the burned-out houses, but Adare had a sense that instead of the recent violence, she was seeing the wreckage of her own wars, battles a thousand years dead and more.

“The people need hope,” Lehav said finally.

Adare met his eyes. “So start handing it out with the grain,” she growled. “Greatest city in the world must have a few warehouses just packed to the rafters with hope.”

“A flip response,” the soldier said. “One that ill becomes the prophet of Intarra.”

“Intarra,” Adare said, the word so bitter on her tongue it might have been a curse rather than a prayer. “Where’s the goddess when you need her?”

Lehav’s jaw tightened. “That you would ask such a question is the reason the people are losing hope.”

“They’re losing hope,” Adare spat, “because I’m burning down their fucking homes and the Urghul are coming to finish the job.”

To Adare’s surprise, it was Nira rather than Lehav who replied. “He’s right,” she said. “Men don’t need a goddess when the table’s piled high and the bed is warm. They need her when the well runs dry. When the fire’s all but burned out.”

“I need her, too,” Adare snarled. She could feel the heat seared into her skin at the Everburning Well, could trace the scar. But what good were heat and scar in defending a city? Where were the bolts of lightning stabbing down out of the sky to scatter their unnumbered foes? Where was the strength to melt rock and level armies? Adare’s own glowing eyes were just that … glowing. They could barely illuminate a manuscript in a pitch-dark room, let alone save a whole city from destruction. “I need her, too,” she said again, shaking her head.

“The goddess will guard us,” Lehav said. “Think of the Everburning Well. It was only in your last, most dire moment, when you had committed yourself fully to the cause, that she showed herself.”

Adare nodded. The memory was still vivid as a dream from which she had only just awoken-the spear in her hand, a scream sharp on her lips, lightning carving apart the sky, and that single command offered in a voice larger than the whole world: Win.

I’m trying, she’d argued back almost every day since. I’m fucking trying.

Nira spat onto the stones. “Far as I’ve seen, faith’s about as much use as a piss bucket with a hole punched in the bottom. Ya need something people can see. When the faith wears out, people believe what they’ve seen. Sometimes, girl, ya gotta make your own miracles.”

Lehav’s face hardened at the old woman’s outburst, but he knew better than to take the bait. Instead, he turned back to Adare.

“Another question remains. We have yet to determine the structure of command.”

Adare glanced around the tower’s top. The sad fact was that these were the only people in the city she came anywhere close to trusting. Lehav, Kegellen, and Nira. A religious zealot, the queen of all thieves, and an undying leach teetering on the verge of madness. It hardly made for a reassuring coalition, but then, even this unstable alliance was better than the council. When the council fled, Adare didn’t even bother trying to stop them. At least the small group assembled on the tower’s top was willing to fight. The problem was that they didn’t trust each other.

“You have the command,” Adare replied, nodding to Lehav. “You’re the closest thing we have to a general, so you’re in charge.”

Kegellen pursed her lips. “While I appreciate this young man’s fine…” She let her eyes rove over his legs and chest. “… qualities, I’m afraid that many of Annur’s less savory characters might chafe if they are told to take their orders from him. It is a sad fact that many of the most dangerous men and women in this city, men and women whose help we will dearly want if the horsemen come to call-they are dissolute, anarchic, unaccustomed to true military discipline. If I ask them to salute, and march in step, I fear they will rebel.”

Adare looked at the woman. Kegellen smiled blithely back.

“What do you want?” Adare asked, voice tight.

“Want?” Kegellen asked. She blinked once, as though shocked by the question.

“This is a negotiation. You know it, and so do I. So what do you want?”

Lehav stepped forward, addressing himself to Kegellen. “The prophet of Intarra does not negotiate, nor does the Emperor of Annur. I know the scum of Annur as well as you do, woman. I grew up on your streets.” He turned to Adare. “We don’t need thousands of killers and thieves playing havoc up here on the battlements. They’re scavengers, not warriors. We’re better off without them.”

Kegellen raised her brows, but Adare cut in before she could respond.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “We do need them. Look at this wall.” She gestured to the stone walkway stretching away into the distance, the bustle of normal commerce to the south, a smoking, blackened wasteland to the north. “The Sons cannot hold it all. The Sons cannot hold one-tenth of it. Maybe you haven’t been paying attention, but the Urghul broke past the entire Army of the North.”

“Only after il Tornja left,” Lehav pointed out. “The legions were compromised.”

Adare stared at him. “And you don’t think we’re compromised?” She swept a hand over the smoking rubble. A quarter mile to the north, well out of bowshot, men and women were picking through the wreckage. Adare had given orders against it, but there was no time to enforce those orders, no men. If the scavengers got too close to the wall, the soldiers would take a shot. Otherwise, they were free to pore over the destruction, to search for something left in the wreckage.

“We are miserably compromised,” she said again, more quietly. “We do not have il Tornja. The only fighters on these walls will be the fighters we put there, and I will not leave whole sections undefended because we were too squeamish to make use of Kegellen’s people.”

“Oh,” the woman replied, pressing a palm on her broad chest. “They are not my people. I am just a fat, slow woman.…”

“Save it,” Adare growled. “We know what you are. We need the bodies you can put on this wall. So what do you want?”

To Adare’s surprise, Kegellen’s smile, when it finally came, was almost sad.

“You’re a smart woman, Your Radiance. But you’re young. It would be well for you to remember that you don’t understand the world as well as you think.”

As Adare blinked, Nira stepped into the gap. “And just what the dolled-up fuck’s that supposed ta mean?”

Kegellen kept her eyes on Adare. “It means I don’t want anything. Not for myself. I only ask that the women and men I send to this wall operate in their own groups in their own ways. They are not accustomed to military structure, military discipline. It will get them killed, will keep them from killing.”

“Impossible,” Lehav said.

“No,” Adare said, shaking her head. “It is not impossible. Here is what will happen. I’ve named you general, and so you will decide the deployment of Kegellen’s people. You will give them their position and their orders, then you will leave them to carry out those orders in their own way.”

Lehav shook his head. “You don’t understand how an army functions, Your Radiance. Units shift in battle, cover for one another, reinforce one another.”

“And that would be wonderful,” Adare said, “if Annur’s cutthroats and thugs were organized into units. They are not. You might train them if we had three months, but we have three days. You will give them a clear task and you will let them fight in their own way.”

The soldier’s lips tightened, then he offered a stiff salute. “As you say, Your Radiance.”

Adare turned to Kegellen, who was watching her between narrowed eyes. “Is that enough for you?”

The woman nodded slowly. “I will get all those who can carry a sword.”

“Do better,” Adare said. “Get me anyone who can still bite.”

Before the woman could respond, a commotion erupted down below. Men were protesting on the wall to the west. Protesting, then shouting, angry, then afraid. Steel rang against stone. In all the madness of soldiers and masons coming and going, it took Adare a moment to find the cause of this new disturbance.

“There,” Lehav said, leveling a finger at three figures in black advancing down the walkway at the wall’s top. As he spoke, he dropped his hand to the sword at his belt. Even Kegellen had formed her lips into a pout, had slipped a fan from her jeweled belt and snapped it open. The black-clad figures were still a hundred paces distant, but the caution seemed more than warranted.

The leader was a woman Adare had never seen before-young, muscular beneath her blacks, red hair caught in the northern wind and streaming out behind her like flame. The Sons stationed on the walkway had moved to block her approach, barking orders and baring swords, squaring up across the path. The red-haired woman ignored them, if ignored was the right word.

One of the Sons stepped forward, leveling his sword at her chest. She swatted it aside with the flat of her hand, slammed the other into the soldier’s throat, then stepped past him as he dropped. The motion didn’t even seem violent. It seemed-sensible, efficient. She hadn’t even bothered to draw her own weapons.

“Kettral,” Lehav said grimly.

“Kettral indeed,” Adare replied. “The question is, whose.”

“Well, obviously they’re not fucking ours,” Nira snapped, “since we don’t know them, and they’re gutting our men.”

Adare watched a moment longer. “Not gutting them,” she said. “They’re not even hurting them.”

The red-haired woman looked up as though she’d heard the words, found Adare’s eyes, and spread her hands. “Call off your dogs,” she shouted. “We’re here to talk.”

Another man came at her, spear extended. She pivoted, grabbed the shaft, and tossed him half a dozen feet onto a flat-roofed building just south of the wall. She caught the next soldier’s sword on the spear, kicked him in the crotch with a booted foot, knocked his blade away as he fell, and stepped past him. They were maybe forty paces off now. The woman didn’t look frightened. She didn’t even look winded. She looked pissed off.

“If they keep this shit up,” she shouted, “we’re going to have to hurt someone, and I don’t like hurting Annurians.”

“I will deal with this,” Lehav said grimly.

“No,” Adare growled. “Call back your men.”

The commander glanced at her, face unreadable, then barked out the order. The Sons remaining between the Kettral and the tower-maybe a dozen all told-hesitated, then inched backward, blades still drawn. They might have ceased to exist for all the attention the red-haired woman paid them. From somewhere in the streets below, an arrow flashed up, but before Adare could shout, before she could even flinch, it glanced aside, as though striking an invisible wall. The leader of the Kettral didn’t pay attention to that, either, but behind her another woman, not much more than a girl, really, drew her own bow and fired back, three times in quick succession. There were no more arrows from the street.

“Enough killing,” Adare said.

“We’re not killing anyone,” the woman snapped. “Annick’s shooting stunners, and I’m relying on my fucking palms.” She held them up, as though to make the point.

“You are perpetrating violence against my men.”

“Your men are idiots. I told them I needed to talk to you. They were unhelpful.”

Kegellen chuckled merrily. “It is not often that people live up to their reputation, but I’ll admit to being charmed by these Kettral.”

The Sons of Flame had fallen back almost to the tower itself, and Adare studied the Kettral as they approached. It was possible that il Tornja had sent them; the man was the titular commander of all Annurian military orders, after all. On the other hand, it seemed a strange sort of assassination attempt that would take place here, in the full light of day, in the middle of a thousand soldiers.

“Leave your weapons with the soldiers at the tower’s base,” Adare said finally. “Come up, and we can talk.”

The Kettral leader nodded, but Nira was grumbling at Adare’s side. “Not sure if ya just saw that pale-skinned bitch slap her way through half your fucking army, but I don’t think the not havin’ of weapons is really gonna slow her down.”

Adare glanced over at Lehav and Kegellen. “They’re armed.”

Kegellen spread her hands. “I am a slow old woman with a fan.”

“This woman is fast,” Lehav said, watching the Kettral intently as they approached and surrendered their weapons.

The three of them seemed to be carrying enough steel to arm an Annurian legion: twin blades and belt knives, throwing knives and bows and arrows. It all went into a glittering heap. If they were worried about disarming, it didn’t show. The Sons, on the other hand, for all that they had the numbers and the weapons, looked ready to leap from the ramparts.

It was only when the red-haired woman finally stomped up the stairs that Adare was able to see how young she was. Despite the scars and the muscle knotting her frame, she looked younger than Adare herself, although the look in those eyes was anything but naive.

“Your Radiance,” she said, nodding so shallowly the motion barely qualified as a genuflection. “My name is Gwenna Sharpe. I knew your brother. Both of them, actually. Where’s Kaden?”

Adare’s heart thundered inside her. She kept her face still. “You were on Valyn’s Wing.”

“All three of us,” the woman replied. She studied Adare boldly. “Not sure if you got the news, but he died. Up north in Andt-Kyl. Heard you were there, too.”

Adare tensed, and Lehav, hearing something dangerous in the woman’s voice, took half a step forward.

The woman glanced over at the soldier. “Nice sword. Get any closer to me, and I’ll put it in your eye.”

“Gwenna,” said the man standing behind her. He was as dark-skinned as she was pale, as soft-spoken as Sharpe was brash.

“This is Talal,” she said, nodding to him. “He thinks I need to have a better attitude. Walk more softly. Keep the blades sheathed. That sort of thing.” As she spoke, her eyes never left Adare’s. Her smile was almost feral. “Thing is, I’ve had pretty good luck with the blades so far.…”