The Last Mortal Bond Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Intarra’s Spear is a daunting climb, even for hard men.”
    â€œIt’s only thirty floors to my study,” Kaden replied, forcing his legs into motion once more. He made the climb almost every day, but always at a leisurely pace. More and more leisurely, he now realized, as the months had passed. Amut, on the other hand, had pushed hard since they left the council chamber, and Kaden’s legs had begun to burn by the tenth floor. He put from his mind for the moment the grim fact that he planned to climb well beyond the Spear’s thirtieth floor.
    â€œWhen I lived with the monks,” he said, pausing again when he reached Amut’s landing, “a climb like this would have been a rest, a respite.”
    â€œYou are the First Speaker of the republic. You have more important things to do than tire yourself on the stairs.”
    â€œYou’re the First Shield of the Aedolian Guard,” Kaden countered, “and you find the time to run these stairs every morning.” He’d seen the man training a few times, always well before dawn, always in full armor with a bag of sand across his shoulders, hammering up the steps, his face a mask of determination.
    â€œI run them every morning,” Amut replied grimly, “and still I failed in my duty.”
    Kaden turned away from the stairs above to face the guardsman. He made his voice hard.
    â€œEnough of your shame. I am alive. The council is safe. This self-reproach is an indulgence, one that will shed no light on what happened here.”
    Amut glanced up at him, ground his teeth, then nodded. “As you say, First Speaker.”
    â€œTalk while we climb,” Kaden said. There were still fifteen more floors before they reached the study. “More slowly, this time. What happened up here?”
    Hand still on his sword, Amut started up again. He spoke without turning his head, as though addressing the empty staircase before him.
    â€œSomeone infiltrated the palace.”
    â€œNot hard,” Kaden observed. “There must be a thousand people who come through the gates every day—servants, messengers, merchants, carters.…”
    â€œThen they gained access to the Spear.”
    Kaden tried to puzzle that through. There was only one entrance to Intarra’s Spear, a high, arched doorway burned or carved or quarried from the unscratchable ironglass of the tower walls. Aedolians guarded it day and night.
    â€œYour men below…”
    â€œThe Spear is hardly a sealed fortress. Imperial…” Amut shook his head, then corrected himself. “ Republican business is conducted here. People come and go. My men at the door are tasked with stopping obvious threats, but they cannot stop everyone, not without causing untold disruption.”
    Kaden nodded, seeing the outlines of the problem.
    Intarra’s Spear was ancient, older than human memory, even older than the most venerable Csestriim records. The architects of the Dawn Palace had constructed their fortress around it without knowing who had built the tower itself, or how, or why. Kaden had dim childhood memories of his sister reading tome after tome exploring the mystery, codex after codex, each one with a theory, an argument, something that seemed like evidence. Sometimes, Adare, Sanlitun had finally told her, you must accept that there are limits to knowledge . It is possible that we will never know the true story of the Spear .
    And all the time, of course, he had known.
    â€œI told your father the Spear’s purpose,” Kiel had said to Kaden months earlier, only days after they reclaimed the Dawn Palace, “just as I will tell you now.”
    The two of them—the First Speaker of the fledgling Annurian Republic and the deathless Csestriim historian—had been sitting cross-legged in the shadow of a bleeding willow, at the edge of a small pond in the Dowager’s Garden. A breeze rucked the green-brown water; light winked