The Emperor's Blades (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #1)(9)
“The crew barely even knew they were in trouble—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Fane cut him off with a snort and a curt chop of his hand.
“I give you ten minutes to look over this ’Kent-kissing goat f*ck, and your only conclusion is that it was a surprise attack? What have you been doing? Pilfering rings and going through pockets?”
“I was just starting—”
“And now you’re finished. How about you, Yurl?” Fane asked, pointing to the tall blond youth. “Maybe you can find some way to contribute to His Most Radiant Highness’s exhaustive analysis.”
“There’s just so much to say,” Sami Yurl began, shooting Valyn a satisfied smirk.
“That spit-licking son of a whore,” Lin hissed, low enough that only Valyn could hear.
Though all the cadets endured the same privations and aimed at the same goal, there were rifts in the group. Most of the young soldiers enlisted out of a hybrid desire to defend the empire, see the world, and fly those enormous birds to which only the Kettral had access. For a peasant’s son from the plains of Sia, the Kettral offered opportunities too fantastic to be believed. Others, however, came to the Islands for other reasons: the chance to fight, to inflict pain, to take life—these drew some as rotting flesh drew vultures. Despite Sami Yurl’s smooth good looks, he was a brutal and nasty fighter. Unlike most of the other cadets, he seemed never to have put his past behind him, striding around the Islands as though expecting everyone to bow and scrape. It was tempting to dismiss him as the pampered, puffed-up son of a lord, an aristocratic fool who had lucked into the cadets through coin or family connections. The truth was more galling: Yurl was an effective, dangerous fighter, better with his blades than some full-rank Kettral. He’d beaten Valyn bloody dozens of times over the years, and if there was one thing he enjoyed more than winning, it was humiliating those he had defeated.
“The attack,” Yurl continued, “happened three days ago, judging by the air temperature, the number of flies, and the rot on the bodies. As Lin said”—he shot her a sly glance—“it was a night assault; otherwise, more of the crew would have been armed. When the pirates hit—”
“Pirates?” the trainer asked sharply.
Yurl shrugged and turned to the nearest corpse, casually kicking the head aside to reveal a gash running from clavicle to chest. “Wounds are consistent with the weaponry that kind of trash tends to favor. The hold is ransacked. They hit the boat and took the goods. Bang the whore and get out the door—pretty standard.”
Balendin chuckled at the crack. Lin bristled, and Valyn put a calming hand on her arm.
“Lucky for them,” Yurl added, “there weren’t any professionals on board.” His tone suggested that if he had been manning the deck, the attackers would have encountered a very different reception.
Valyn wasn’t so sure.
“Pirates didn’t do this.”
Fane cocked a bushy eyebrow. “The Light of the Empire speaks again! You wouldn’t want to rest on your laurels after so astutely identifying the ‘surprise attack.’ Please, enlighten us.”
Valyn ignored the goading. Kettral trainers could crawl under one’s skin quicker than a sandfly. It was one of the reasons they made good trainers. A cadet who couldn’t keep his cool wasn’t likely to make much of a soldier when the arrows started flying, and Fane was nothing if not adept at making people lose their cool.
“This crew wasn’t the usual mix of sailors with a few mercenary marines to guard the cargo,” Valyn began. “These men were professionals.”
Yurl smirked. “Professionals. Right. Which explains why they’re scattered around the deck like chum.”
“You’ve had a chance to run your mouth, Yurl,” Fane said. “Now, shut it, and see if the golden boy over here can manage to do something other than embarrass himself.”
Valyn suppressed a smile and nodded to the trainer before continuing. “The crew looks pretty standard. A dozen men—the kind you’d find running a sloop like this anywhere from Anthera to the Waist. But only two of the bunks have been used. That means ten men on the deck at all times. They were ready for an attack.” He waited for that to sink in.
“And their weapons. They don’t look like much.” He lifted a standard deckblade from the hand of the nearest corpse and held it up to the light. “But this is Liran steel. What kind of merchant rig runs ten on the deck, every man carrying Liran steel?”
“I’m sure,” Fane drawled, “that you’re planning to make a point sometime before the sun sets.” The man sounded bored, but Valyn could see the glint in his eye. He was onto something.
“All I’m saying is that if this lot were professionals, then the ones who boarded the ship and cut them down weren’t your garden-variety pirates.”
“Well, well,” the trainer replied, looking around the cluster of cadets to see that everyone had followed the argument. “Even a blind horse finds the paddock once in a while.”
By Eyrie standards, the backhand remark counted as high praise. Valyn nodded, hiding his satisfaction. Sami Yurl’s lips tightened into a scowl.
“Ten minutes on deck,” Fane continued, glaring, “and only the imperial mascot, here, has been able to tell me a single worthwhile thing about this ’Kent-kissing wreck. I didn’t rope two birds into flying you out here just so you could spend the morning sticking your thumbs up one another’s asses. Go over it again. Use your eyes. Find me something worth knowing.”