The Flea glanced over at Sigrid. The blond woman met his gaze, then nodded.
“We’ll get them,” he said, turning back to Gwenna. “We don’t have a bird anyway, and this is a job for a foot team. You take care of Balendin.”
Gwenna stared. “Take care of him? You have any ideas how to do that?”
“Nope. That’s why it’s your job.” The Flea gestured toward the birds. “You’ve got five Wings here. Use ’em.”
For a moment, Gwenna couldn’t move. The thought was too large, the responsibility too daunting. Then the Flea stepped forward, set a solid hand on her shoulder. “You’re a good soldier, Gwenna.”
She met his eyes, but could find no words.
“This is what you trained to do,” the Flea went on, his voice quiet, low, steady as the waves on the shore. “No one ever thinks they’re ready for something like this, but I’m telling you now, and I’m only going to say it once, so listen good.…” He paused, smiled that crooked smile of his. “You’re ready.”
Then, before Gwenna could respond, he and Sigrid were gone, racing south toward Valyn, toward the Army of the North, toward a viciously powerful leach, and in all likelihood, toward an immortal Csestriim general against whom every human attack had failed.
“Well, shit,” Gwenna muttered.
“I agree,” Talal replied. He was standing just a pace distant, Annick at his side.
“We could go with him,” Gwenna said. “Provide air cover.”
“That didn’t work so well last time,” the leach pointed out, “and besides. Balendin’s here. We can’t fight all the fights.”
Gwenna nodded, looked past him to where Quick Jak was going over Allar’ra’s wings, sliding his hands beneath the feathers looking for damage.
“Can he fly?” Gwenna shouted.
The flier hesitated. “He can fly, but I need more time to assess the damage.…”
“We don’t have more time. We have to hit Balendin now. Once he knocks down half the wall, there won’t be much point.” She gestured to the other Kettral, most of whom had dismounted to check over weapons and birds. “Fliers and Wing commanders on me.”
The plan was as shitty as it was simple. They had five birds. Balendin couldn’t look five directions at once. Four Wings would come in from the cardinal directions, and one would stoop from almost directly above.
“Balendin shields himself,” Talal pointed out. “He did at Andt-Kyl, anyway. If the leach attacking us to the south was using a hammer, Balendin’s kenning will be like an invisible wall.”
Gwenna nodded, wondering if she had it all wrong. “He shields himself against arrows, flatbow bolts, spears. You think he can hold out against eight tons of bird coming at him faster than a galloping horse?”
Talal hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”
The other Kettral looked nervous. Quick Jak, for all his slick flying just moments earlier, seemed close to panic. He had picked at the cuticle of his thumb so viciously that the nail was awash in blood, but he just kept at it, not seeming to notice.
“Look,” Gwenna said, stepping forward. “Balendin’s only going to get stronger. The more people in this city learn that he’s here, learn who he is and what he does, the harder it’s going to be to kill him. I can’t say that my plan will work. Maybe we get lucky, maybe someone gets through, and maybe we all die.
“I will tell you this, though. You are Kettral, every ’Kent-kissing one of you. We called you washouts, but you’re not, not anymore. You went down in the Hole, you fought the slarn, you drank the egg, and you came back out. That makes you Kettral, you crazy sons of bitches, and let me tell you something about being Kettral. We don’t get the easy jobs. We don’t pull wall duty or guarding the baggage chain. In return for getting to fly around on these enormous, manslaughtering hawks, we actually have to go do the dangerous shit, the shit that gets men and women killed, and so if this isn’t what you signed up for, you tell me now.” She paused, shifting her eyes from one soldier to the next. “Which one of you isn’t Kettral? Who wants to wash out all over again?”
No one stepped forward. No one spoke.
Finally, Gwenna allowed herself to smile. “Good. Mount up.”
* * *
Their hastily constructed plan failed almost the moment they stepped from the shelter of Kegellen’s street-level warehouse and into the street beyond. They needed to go outside in order for the bird to find them, of course, but when they stepped, blinking, into the afternoon heat and sunlight, there was no kettral in the sky. Kaden stood with Valyn and Triste in a wide, treelined avenue, one of Annur’s larger thoroughfares. Shops occupied the bottom floors of the buildings to either side-leatherworkers, mostly, judging from the wares on display-and the street itself was busy with men and women haggling or selling, pushing handcarts loaded with stock, making purchases or deliveries. It almost might have been a normal city street on an everyday afternoon, except for the Annurian soldiers, at least a dozen of them, jogging up the center of the road from the south. They hadn’t spotted their quarry yet, but they weren’t bothering to stop, not even pausing to search inside the shops. They moved with the certainty of hunters who knew exactly where to find the beast they sought.
Valyn glanced at the soldiers, then gestured to Kaden and Triste. “North. Walk fast until they see us, then run.”
“Where’s the kettral?” Triste hissed.
“No idea.”
“We could retreat,” Kaden said, nodding toward Kegellen’s warehouse. The Queen of the Streets had remained behind, inside, along with a knot of her guards.
“No,” Valyn growled, dragging him into the foot traffic. “We can’t. You can’t hide, not as long as il Tornja has those ’Shael-spawned spiders. You go back in those tunnels, and you’ll die there. He’s got the whole Army of the North to pin you down, smoke you out.”
Even as he spoke, Valyn’s eyes roamed over the street ahead. He hadn’t drawn the axes from the belt, but that ruined gaze was enough to make anyone who met it jerk back, turn hastily aside, find somewhere else to look, somewhere else to be.
“The bird’s our best shot at getting to the top of the Spear.”
“And if the bird doesn’t show up?” Kaden asked.
“Then we do it the hard way.”
“What does that mean?” Triste demanded.
“We go on foot,” Valyn said. “Fight our way in, up. There’s no choice now-we have to keep moving.”
Triste stopped walking, turned to stare at Valyn. “Fight our way in?”
“There are three of us,” Kaden said quietly, taking Triste by the elbow as he spoke, urging her into motion once more. “Three of us against il Tornja’s entire army.”
Valyn’s smile was like something carved across his face with a knife. “I’m not sure you understand.”
“Not sure I understand what?”
“Everything that’s happened this past year,” Valyn replied, then trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m not the brother you remember, Kaden. I’m something … different. When you tally up the good people in this fight, the noble ones, the ones who’ve been doing the right thing: I’m not on that list. Not anymore. I don’t think I’ve been on that list for a very long time.”
The words were lost, haunted, as though someone had hollowed out this warrior who stalked down the street, his scarred hand on the head of his ax.
“That doesn’t matter,” Kaden said. “Not right now.”
“Yes, it does.”
Behind them, a sudden cry cut through the everyday babble of the avenue. The soldiers were shouting, bellowing questions and orders. Kaden risked a glance over his shoulder. The men weren’t jogging, they were running, fingers leveled directly at Kaden himself. When he turned back to the north, he found the far end of the street blocked by a hastily assembled cordon of armed men. Valyn was still smiling.
“The thing you don’t understand, my calm, quiet brother, is that sometimes goodness and nobility aren’t enough. Sometimes, when the monsters come, you need a dark, monstrous thing to pit against them.” He slid one ax from the loop at his belt, then the other. People cried out in alarm, lurched away. Valyn ignored them. “I am that thing, Kaden. The human part of me … the part that should feel camaraderie, friendship, love…” He shook his head. “It’s gone. There is only darkness. I’m not a brother, not really. Not a friend. Not an ally or son. I don’t know how to be those things. All I know is blood and struggle. It is all I am. This fight, right now, is what I am for.”