“Stand by,” the sniper responded after a pause. “He’s passing behind some rock.”

Kaden looked from Annick to Valyn, then to the small defile where Adiv had disappeared. After hours of lying on their bellies, waiting and watching, things were abruptly going too fast. He had expected the long wait to be followed by conversation, deliberation, a review of the facts and exchange of ideas. Suddenly, though, with no discussion at all, a man was about to die, a traitor and a murderer, but a man all the same.

The Kettral didn’t seem concerned. Gwenna and Valyn were staring over the rock; the demolitions master eagerly, Valyn silent and focused. Laith was trying to make a wager with Talal.

“I’ll bet you a silver moon she kills him with the first shot.”

“I’m not betting against Annick,” the leach replied.

The flier cursed. “What odds will you give me to take the other side? Ten to one for her to miss?”

“Make it fifty,” Talal said, resting his bald head against the rock, considering the sky.

“Twenty.”

“No,” Kaden said.

“Fine. Twenty-five.”

“Not the bet,” Kaden said, putting a hand on Valyn’s shoulder. “Don’t kill him.”

Valyn turned from the valley below to look at Kaden. “What?”

“Oh for the sweet love of ’Shael,” Gwenna growled. “Who’s running this Wing?”

Valyn ignored Gwenna. Instead, his black eyes bored into Kaden, drinking the light. “Adiv’s behind all this, Your Radiance,” he said. “He and Ut. They’re the ones that killed the monks, that tried to kill you, not to mention the fact that they’re clearly involved in our father’s murder. With Ut gone, Adiv is the ranking commander down there. We kill him, we take a head off the beast.”

“I have him again,” Annick said.

“Don’t shoot,” Kaden insisted, shaking his head, trying to order his thoughts. Years earlier, while attempting to recapture a goat, he’d lost his footing above the White River, plunging down the rocks and into the current. It was all he could do to breathe, to keep his head above the roiling surface, to fend off the jagged boulders as they loomed up before him, all the time knowing that he had less than a quarter mile to pull himself clear of the torrent before it plunged him over a cliff. The immediacy of the moment, the inability to pause, to reflect, the absolute necessity of action had terrified him and when he finally caught hold of a fallen limb, clawing his way up and out, the feeling left him shaking on the bank. The Shin had taught him much about patience, but almost nothing of haste. Now, with the eyes of the entire Wing upon him, with the coal-smudged point of Annick’s arrow fixed on Adiv, he felt that awful, ineluctable forward rush all over again.