“I don’t like it,” Laith said, shaking his head. He’d lost his habitual good humor when ’Ra left, and the question of the prisoners had done nothing to lighten his mood. “In fact, I fucking hate it. Three of them are kids, and the rest . . .” He gestured at the kneeling figures. “It’s not like we’re killing them in a fight.” He blew out a long breath. “But we have to do it. We have to kill them.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Gwenna growled.

Valyn nodded slowly. “Gwenna’s right. Whatever Hendran said on the matter, they are our prisoners, our responsibility. It’s our decision.”

“Fine,” Laith said, “then I’ve decided that we need to kill them. Is that enough responsibility for you?”

“No,” Valyn replied, reining in his own anger, keeping his voice level. “It’s not. You said it already. Three of them are kids, Laith. Children.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Annick said. “Taking them with us is too risky, and if we leave them, they could follow.”

“On what?” Valyn demanded. “We’re taking the ’Kent-kissing horses. I don’t care how fit these sons of bitches are, by the end of the morning we’ll be gone.”

“And what if they talk?” Laith demanded. “What if another batch of Urghul finds them and asks what happened to their horses?”

“Then we’ll fight them,” Gwenna said. “We already fought these, and it was a pretty short fucking fight.”

Annick shook her head, a curt, dismissive motion. “This is a tiny group. Some of the taamu number into the hundreds.”

“Then we run,” Gwenna insisted. “We retreat.”

Laith barked an incredulous laugh. “We outride the ’Kent-kissing Urghul on their own steppe on their own horses? How do you expect that to go?”

Valyn took a deep breath, then spoke. “This is beside the point.”

“Seems to me it’s exactly the point,” Laith said. “What are the risks? How do we minimize them? I seem to remember an entire year spent studying this shit back on the Islands.”

“We talked about minimizing risks in legitimate fights,” Valyn said. “Not about murdering kids who can’t hurt us.”

“What is a legitimate fight?” Annick asked.

“A mission,” Valyn said. “Against the enemy. Not just an uncomfortable situation we crashed into the middle of.”

“The Urghul are the enemy,” Laith pointed out. “They boil people alive. They cut off your eyelids. The Eyrie has been flying missions over the White for years now.”

“Not to kill kids,” Valyn replied. He held up a hand to forestall the flier’s objection. “Why did you join the Kettral?”

Laith shook his head. “I don’t know. Because they showed up and told me I could fly massive killer birds. Because they’re the Kettral, for ’Shael’s sake.”

“And if the Urghul had birds? Would you fly for the Urghul?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”