The man finally turned his head at the sound of their voices. He was young, maybe a year or two older than Valyn. He raised a weak hand in a gesture that might have been pleading or accusation, his jaw working around the mangled wreckage of his words.

Valyn blew out a long, uneven breath. Talal was right. The only kindness now was the knife’s kindness, and yet Valyn hesitated, feeling for the first time what it meant to command the Wing. With all the swimming and language study, flight training and demolitions work back on the Islands, it was easy sometimes to forget that this was what he had trained his whole life to do. Kettral was just a polite word for killer. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to be killing Annurian soldiers, but then, killing was killing. No one wanted to die.

Valyn forced himself to look at the wounded soldier; the least he could do was meet his eyes. The legionary held the stare. What did he see, looking into the darkness of Valyn’s vacant irises? Valyn read fear and pain, smelled the hot burn of terror on the air. Maybe the messenger had been following their conversation, maybe not, but one way or another, he knew that his death had arrived.

Which makes every heartbeat a cruelty, Valyn thought bleakly.

Then, before he could think further, he buried his knife in the soldier’s neck, ripping furiously through the windpipe and arteries, then tearing up through the muscle until the blade snagged on bone. Hot blood soaked his blacks, and Valyn’s own breath came hot and ragged in his throat. The soldier sagged against him, head canting off at an obscene angle, eyes blank, mouth hanging open.

“Holy Hull, Val,” Laith muttered. “You didn’t need to take his whole head off.”

Valyn stared at the body for a moment, then jerked his knife free. The corpse collapsed.

“He’s fucking dead, isn’t he?” he demanded, knuckles white with clutching the blade. “Let’s see what the other two have to say. Let’s see if all this was worth anything.”

30

Morjeta’s personal chambers comprised a suite of breezy, high-ceilinged marble rooms with tall narrow windows three times Kaden’s height, where gossamer curtains fluttered with the breeze. After gesturing them in, the leina shut the heavy wooden door behind her, turned a key in the lock, then crossed to the windows, brushing aside the curtains, leaning far enough out to see the stonework on either side.