“Anyone want to sneak into their camp with Ut’s body?” Laith asked. “We could prop him up somewhere, make it look like he’s drinking ale or taking a leak? See how long it takes them to notice the fucker’s not breathing?” He looked from Valyn to Kaden, eyebrows raised. “No? That’s not why we came back here?”

The group of them had returned to Ashk’lan that morning, flying west from their meager camp in the heart of the Bone Mountains, the same camp where they had fought and killed the men chasing them down, Aedolians and traitorous Kettral both. The trip had occasioned a heated debate: there was broad agreement that someone needed to go, both to check for survivors and to see if there was anything to be learned from the Annurian soldiers who had remained behind when Ut and Tarik Adiv chased Kaden into the peaks. The disagreement centered on just who ought to make the trip.

Valyn didn’t want to risk bringing anyone outside his own Wing, but Kaden pointed out that if the Kettral wanted to make use of the snaking network of goat tracks surrounding the monastery, they needed a monk familiar with the land. Rampuri Tan, of course, was the obvious choice—he knew Ashk’lan better than Kaden, not to mention the fact that, unlike Kaden, he could actually fight—and the older monk, despite Valyn’s misgivings, seemed to consider his participation a foregone conclusion. Pyrre, meanwhile, argued that it was stupid to return in the first place.

“The monks are dead,” she observed, “may Ananshael unknit their celibate souls. You can’t help them by poking at the bodies.”

Kaden wondered what it felt like to be the assassin, to worship the Lord of the Grave, to have lived so close to death for so long that it held no terror, no wonder. Still, it was not the bodies he wanted to go back for. There was a chance, however small, that the soldiers had captured some of the monks rather than killing them. It wasn’t clear what Kaden could do if they had, but with the Kettral at his back it might be possible to rescue one or two. At the very least, he could look.