Valyn took a deep breath, then turned back to the scene at hand. The first soldier was bent double, straining to haul breath through his shattered windpipe as he clawed at the dirt with one hand. The man trapped beneath the horse lay still, but it was clear from the awkward angle of his body that his leg was broken. A heavy horrible stone settled in Valyn’s gut. In just heartbeats his neat ambush had spiraled utterly out of control. The men down weren’t traitors or barbarians; they were Annurians, soldiers of his own empire, loyal troops following orders as best as they were able, and for that loyalty Valyn had attacked them, crippled at least one for life, and possibly killed another.

“Is he alert?” Valyn asked roughly, turning to Laith. The flier had the fourth soldier pinned to the earth, a knee in the small of his back.

“For now,” he replied, lacing the man’s wrists with a length of light cord. He glanced over his shoulder at the surrounding violence. His eyes showed bleak in the moonlight. “Holy Hull. What did we do?”

“We did what we had to,” Valyn replied, trying to shackle his own nausea and horror.

“Had to?” Laith demanded, gesturing at the bodies with a hand. “How did we have to do this?”

“It’s done, Laith,” Talal said quietly, rejoining the two of them. “It went wrong, but we all did it, and we can’t take it back.”

“What about him?” Valyn asked, nodding toward the soldier up the road. Talal had slit the horse’s throat, and both beast and man lay still.

The leach shook his head. “The fall snapped his neck.”

Valyn stared at the shadowy forms of man and horse, then turned his back on them, crossing instead to the soldier with the injured windpipe. The Annurian knelt on his hands and knees, hacking out a shattered sound, half cough, half retch, his body quivering in the still air. For a moment, Valyn could do nothing but watch. Between the moon’s light and his own eyes, he could see everything, even the details—the small tattoo of a mouse behind the soldier’s ear, the scarring across his right knuckles, the uneven patch where someone had hacked away too much hair with a belt knife. The man had managed to crawl maybe a dozen paces, no goal beyond escaping his own terror.

“Crushed,” Talal said, joining him.

“Maybe not,” Valyn replied.

“It’s crushed,” the leach said again, quietly but firmly.

“Someone could treat it. Remember Vellik back on the Islands? He busted his throat in a botched barrel drop, and it healed up all right.”

“They got Vellik into the infirmary in less than an hour, and even still, he can barely talk now. I know how to patch up a lot of things, but this . . .” He spread his hands. “It’s just a question of fast or slow.”