The land itself had slowed them to an agonizing slog, and the land wasn’t the only problem. The Thousand Lakes was dotted with small logging villages, some built on high ground, others on teetering stilts, all of them directly athwart the submerged track. Passing through would be simple enough, except that someone was sure to notice their passage, someone who might talk to il Tornja’s scouts, who, in turn, would tell the kenarang about three soldiers in Kettral blacks, three young men evidently unattached to any unit, one with coal-dark skin, another with burned-out eyes. . . . It wouldn’t take a brilliant military mind to recognize their descriptions.

Valyn’s meeting with Adare, far from reassuring him, had been both surprising and unnerving. Her insistence on the kenarang’s loyalty to Annur, her willingness to pardon his flagrant murder of the Emperor, and her veneration for the man’s military mind all set Valyn’s teeth on edge. Worse, the discovery that Long Fist was on the march made it pretty ’Kent-kissing clear that he was just using Valyn as a tool in his own war, one in which he aimed to overrun Annur itself. Which meant that Gwenna and Annick weren’t guests at all; they were prisoners. Valyn and Laith and Talal had been over it two dozen times already, but the ugly fact was that, without a bird, there was nothing they could do for the two women. The best hope, in fact, lay in killing il Tornja, in hoping that after the kenarang was dead they could find some way to go after their Wing mates, to free them.

The fact that he had left them, abandoned them, gnawed viciously at Valyn, but for all the hours he’d spent rehearsing the decision, he couldn’t see a way around it. He’d joined the Kettral expecting to fight on the side of justice and imperial order, but the last few months had disabused him violently of that notion. Instead, he was caught between conflicting evils; any damage he did to one would make him complicit in the crimes of the other.

And yet, standing aside, refusing to take part, was nothing but a coward’s course, and so Valyn dug down until he came to something like bedrock: Ran il Tornja had murdered his father and suborned the empire. The agreement Valyn had hammered out with Adare seemed like the best available: he would let the kenarang stop the Urghul, but then he would see him dead. All of which meant, of course, that il Tornja couldn’t know Valyn was near, was waiting for him. It would be tough enough to kill him unsuspecting, and Valyn had no intention of giving the man an advance warning.