The Providence of Fire

by Brian Staveley

  Red walls, dark as blood, stretched away in both directions. Aside from the crenellations and guard towers punctuating their length, they might have been some ancient feature of the earth itself rather than the work of human hands, a sheer cliff thrust fifty feet into the air, impassable, implacable. Even unguarded, those walls would pose a serious problem to any foe, and yet, it was never the red walls that drew the eye, for inside them stood a thicket of graceful towers: the Jasmine Lance and the White, Yvonne’s and the Crane, the Floating Hall, any one of them magnificent enough to house a king. In another city, a single one of those towers would have dominated the skyline, but in Annur, in the Dawn Palace, they looked like afterthoughts, curiosities, the whim of some idle architect. The eye slid right past them, past and above, scaling the impossible height of Intarra’s Spear.

  Even after twenty years in the Dawn Palace, Adare’s mind still balked at the dimensions of the central tower. Partly it was the height. The spire reached so high it seemed to puncture the firmament, to scratch the blue from the sky. Climbing to the top of the Spear took the better part of a morning provided you started well before dawn, and in years past, some of Annur’s aging emperors had been known to take days to make the trip, sleeping at way stations set up inside the structure.

  The way stations were a later addition. Everything inside the tower—the stairs, the floors, the interior rooms—was an addition, human cleverness cobbled onto the inside of a tower older than human thought. Only the walls were original, walls cut or carved or forged from a substance clear and bright as winter ice, smooth as glass, stronger than tempered steel. From the chambers inside, you could look straight through those walls, out onto the streets and buildings of Annur and beyond, far beyond, well out over the Broken Bay and west into the Ghost Sea. People journeyed from across the empire, from beyond her borders, just to gape at this great, scintillating needle. As much as the legions or the fleet, Intarra’s Spear, its presence at the very heart of the Dawn Palace, drove home the inevitability of Annurian might.

  And it’s all just a few hundred paces from this, Adare reflected as she turned her back on the palace.

  Surrounding her, literally in the shadow of the immaculately maintained walls, hunkered a long row of wine sinks and brothels, teak shacks slapped together, their walls as much gap as wood, crooked doorways and windows hung with limp, ratty cloth. The juxtaposition was glaring, but it had its logic: the Malkeenians maintained the right to raze fifty paces beyond the moat in the event of an assault on the city. There had been no such assault in hundreds of years, but those citizens rich enough to want fine homes were cautious enough to build them elsewhere, far enough from the palace that no skittish emperor would burn them in the name of imperial security. And so, despite their proximity to the palace, the streets and alleys surrounding Adare were all squalor and noise, the scent of cheap pork grilled to burning, rancid cooking oil, shrimp paste and turmeric, and, threaded beneath it all, the salt bite of the sea.

  In the past, as befit her station, Adare had always departed the palace by the Emperor’s Gate, which opened westward onto the Godsway, and for a moment she simply stood, trying to get her bearings, trying to make sense of the cacophony around her. A man was approaching, she realized with a start, a hawker, the wooden bowl hung from his neck filled with some sort of blackened meat, the strips charred to their skewers. He was halfway into his pitch when Fulton stepped forward, shaking his grizzled head and grumbling something curt that Adare couldn’t quite make out. The vendor hesitated, glanced at the pommel of the blade protruding through the Aedolian’s cloak, then spat onto the pitted flags and moved away, already soliciting other business. Birch joined them a moment later.

  “Over Graves?” he asked. “Or along the canal?”

  “Graves would be safer,” Fulton responded, looking pointedly at Adare. “No crowds, fewer lowlifes.”

  The district lay immediately to the west, rising steeply onto the hill that had once, as its name suggested, been given over entirely to funerary plots. As the city grew, however, and land became more precious, the well-to-do merchants and craftsmen who sold their goods in the Graymarket or along the Godsway had slowly colonized the area, building between the cemeteries until the entire hill was a patchwork of crypts and open land broken by rows of mansions with handsome views over the Dawn Palace and the harbor beyond.

  “Graves would be longer,” Adare said firmly. She had made it past the red walls, but their shadow loomed, and she wanted to be away, truly buried in the labyrinth of the city, and quickly. Unwilling to tip her hand to the Aedolians, she hadn’t yet donned her blindfold, relying instead on the depth of her hood to hide her face and eyes. The meager disguise made her twitchy and impatient. “If we want to reach the Lowmarket and be back before noon, we’ll need to take the canal. It’s relatively straight. It’s flat. I’ve traveled the canals before.”

  “Always with a full contingent of guards,” Fulton pointed out. Even as they stood talking, his eyes ranged over the crowd, and his right hand never strayed far from his sword.

  “The longer we stand here arguing,” Adare countered, “the longer I’m outside the palace.”

  “And we’re ducks here,” Birch added, his earlier playfulness gone. “It’s your call, Fulton, but I’d rather be moving than standing.”

  The older Aedolian growled something incomprehensible, stared long and hard at the canal snaking away to the west, then nodded gruffly. “Let’s get across the bridge,” he said. “Less traffic on the southern bank.” He fell in on her left as they crossed the stone span, while Birch walked a few paces to the right, taking up a position between Adare and the waterway when they reached the far side.

  The canal, like two dozen others coiling through the city, was as much a thoroughfare as the actual streets. Vessels crowded the channel, tiny coracles, barges, and slender snake boats, most loaded with wicker baskets or open barrels, most selling to the people on the shore, taking coin in long-handled baskets, and returning goods—fruit or fish, ta or flowers—with the same. People crowded both banks, leaning out over the low stone balustrades, shouting their orders to the boatmen. Every so often, something would drop into the water, and the half-naked urchins shivering on the bank would leap in, fighting viciously with one another in their eagerness to retrieve the sinking goods.

  Without a score of palace guardsmen to clear a path, the walk took longer than Adare remembered. Though she stood taller than most women, almost as tall as Birch, she lacked the bulk necessary to force her way through the press of bodies. Fulton seemed to grow more tense, more wary, with every step, and Adare was starting to feel nervous herself, the relief of having slipped the noose of the red walls replaced by the constant pressure of sweating bodies all around her, the jostling and shouting, the hammering of a thousand voices.

  By the time they broke into the relative tranquillity of the broad plaza facing the Basin, Adare could feel sweat slicking her back. Her breath was all bound up inside her chest and she let it out in a long, uneven sigh. Compared to the lanes fronting the canal, the plaza was wide and relatively empty, a huge sweep of stone flags dotted with knots of men and women. She could see more than two feet in front of her. She could move, breathe. How she would have managed the walk without Fulton and Birch she had no idea.

  Well, you’d better figure it out soon, she told herself. You can’t take them with you.

  She glanced out over the Basin, the wide semi-lake where the Atmani Canal ended after hundreds of miles, ramifying into half a dozen smaller conduits that would carry water and boats to the various quarters of the city. Scores of narrow long-keels swung at anchor, divesting their cargo onto smaller rafts or bobbing barrel-boats, then topping up on stores for the return trip south toward Olon and Lake Baku.

  For a moment Adare paused, eyeing those craft. Her journey would be so much simpler if she could just choose one, step aboard, pay a captain for food and a luxury cabin, then spend the trip south rehearsing her meeting with t
he secretly reunited Sons of Flame and their shadowy leader, Vestan Ameredad. In many ways, the boat would be safer than taking her chances walking the long road—no prying eyes, no brigands, almost no human interaction. The prospect was so alluring.… Alluring and utterly stupid.

  Even at a distance, Adare could make out tax inspectors in their stiff uniforms, members of her own ministry, moving up and down the quays, looking over the off-loaded barrels and bales. She stood far enough off that there was no chance of discovery, but she shrank back into her hood all the same. Within a day Ran would discover that his tame pet had gone missing, and when he came after her, he would expect her to think like a pampered princess. By the next morning, the kenarang’s minions would be crawling through all the most expensive inns and guesthouses in the city. They would be interrogating ship captains down in the harbor, and they would be all over the Basin asking questions about a young woman with coin in her pocket and hidden eyes.

  Adare’s shoulders tightened at the thought of pursuit, hundreds of il Tornja’s men scouring the city for her, and she almost yelped when Fulton stepped closer, taking her firmly by the elbow.

  “Don’t look over your shoulder, Minister,” he said, voice low. “We are being followed.” He glanced at his companion. “Birch, take second point, eyes on the northeast quadrant.”

  Adare started to turn, but Fulton jerked her forward ungently.

  “Don’t. Look,” he hissed.

  Tiny barbs of fear pricked Adare’s skin. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Who is it?”

  “Yes, and I don’t know. Two tall men. They just stepped into a ta shop.”

  Instead of glancing back, Adare stared at the crowd moving and shifting around her. She had no idea how Fulton had picked two faces out of the chaos. There must have been thousands of people in the wide plaza—porters, bare-chested and bent nearly double beneath their loads; knots of garrulous women in bright silk, down from the Graves to pick over the newest goods before they reached market; beggars prostrated beside the fountains; wagon-drivers in broad straw hats prodding indifferent water buffalo through the press. Half an Annurian legion could have been following her through the crowd and Adare might not have noticed.

  “There were hundreds of people moving west along the canal,” Adare whispered. “This is the busiest hour for the Basin. It doesn’t mean they’re all stalking us.”

  “With due respect, Minister,” Fulton replied, herding her surreptitiously to the south, toward one of the smaller streets leading out of the broad square, “you have your business and I have mine.”

  “Where are we going?” Adare demanded, risking a glance over her shoulder despite the Aedolian’s orders. Birch had taken a dozen steps back, his boyish face serious as he scanned the storefronts. “We’re headed south, not west.”

  “We’re not going to the Lowmarket anymore. It’s not safe.”

  Adare took a deep breath. Her entire plan hinged on going west, on getting through the broad plaza, then over the large bridge spanning the Atmani Canal. The fact that someone might have seen her leaving the Dawn Palace, that men might even now be tracking her through the city streets, only increased her urgency.

  “Well, if someone is following, we have to go on,” she said. “We can lose them in the Lowmarket.”

  Fulton glared at her.

  “The Lowmarket is an assassin’s dream—constant crowds, miserable sight lines, and enough noise that you can’t hear yourself talk. I didn’t want you traveling there in the first place, and you’re certainly not going now. You can have me removed from my post when we return to the palace. Have me stripped of my steel, if you want, but until we return, until you do, it is my charge to guard you, and I intend to keep that charge.” His grip tightened on her elbow. “Keep moving. Don’t run.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward Birch, who flicked a series of hand signs, too quick for Adare to follow. The younger Aedolian looked grim and Fulton nodded curtly as he shepherded her toward the nearest street.

  “Where are we going?” Adare hissed again. A return to the Dawn Palace was impossible. Il Tornja would hear of her departure and the strange conditions surrounding it. He would learn that she had been disguised, that she had insisted on a minimal guard, and he would want answers she was ill prepared to give. Even if, through some miracle, Adare was able to keep the abortive journey a secret, the Aedolians would never allow her outside the red walls without a full escort again. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded, vaguely aware of panic fringing her voice.

  “Safety,” Fulton replied. “A storefront nearby.”

  “We’ll be trapped in a ’Kent-kissing storefront.”

  “Not this one. We own it. Run it. Called a rabbit hole—for situations like this.”

  From out of the press, a vendor stepped toward them. He was a fat, genial man smiling a crack-toothed smile as he reached into the bulging cloth bag at his side.

  “Firefruit, lady? Fresh from the Si’ite orchards and juicy as a kiss.…”

  Before he could proffer the fruit in question, Fulton stepped forward. The Aedolian hadn’t drawn his blade, but he didn’t need to. His fist smashed into the vendor’s soft throat, and the man crumpled.

  Adare pulled back, aghast.

  “He was just trying to sell me something,” she protested.

  The fruit seller rolled onto his side, a broken gargle escaping from his windpipe. Pain and panic filled his eyes as he tried to drag himself away on his elbows. The Aedolian didn’t spare him a glance.

  “I didn’t swear an oath to guard his life. We are undermanned and far from the red walls. Keep moving.”

  Behind them, Birch flicked more signals with one hand, the other ready on his sword. Adare felt her breath thicken inside her chest, her stomach churn. In a city of a million souls, she was trapped. Fulton’s firm hand on her elbow had seen to that. Once they left the plaza, there would be no way forward or back, nowhere to run. The Aedolians were only trying to keep her safe, but …

  She stared at Fulton, at his grizzled face. What if they weren’t trying to keep her safe? Away from familiar eyes, the Aedolians could drag her into any old alley and finish the job. She pulled up short. They tried to keep you inside the palace, a voice in her head reminded her, but her ears were ringing and Birch was shouting something, quickening his pace to a trot as he waved them forward.

  It has to be now, she realized. Whether the Aedolians were innocent or not, whether someone was really following them or not, return meant discovery, and discovery meant failure.

  My father is dead, she reminded herself, and I am his last blade. Then, all in a burst, she yanked free.

  Surprise twisted Fulton’s features. “Minister…” he began, but before he could finish, Adare turned and darted west, deeper into the plaza, toward the canal that emptied into the Basin. She needed to get over the bridge spanning that canal, then to the narrow watercourse draining away to the west. Just a few hundred paces, she thought, feet pounding on the wide stones. Just a few hundred paces and she’d be safe.

  “Birch!” the Aedolian bellowed. The younger guardsman spun around, stretching out an arm to stop her, but he was too slow, baffled into momentary hesitation by her unexpected flight.

  Adare ducked to the left, felt the fabric of the dress twist between her legs, and for a moment she was falling, careening toward the broad paving stones. She caught herself with an outstretched hand, pain tearing up her thumb and into her wrist, stumbled a few steps, heard Birch cursing behind her, and then she was running again, the treacherous dress hiked up above her knees.

  Men and women paused to stare as she raced by, faces looming up one after the next, a series of still portraits: a startled child with wide brown eyes; a canal hand holding a long hook, half his face maimed by a vicious scar; a blond Edishman with a beard braided halfway down his chest. Her hood had fallen back revealing her face, revealing her eyes. People began to point, to exclaim. A few children even ran behind her hollering “princess”
and “Malkeenian.”

  She risked a glance over her shoulder—whether for the Aedolians or her more mysterious pursuit, she wasn’t sure. Fulton and Birch were charging after her, but they were a dozen paces back, and, with a flash of surprise, she realized that her plan, though battered, was actually working. The men were stronger than her by far, stronger and faster, but they wore a quarter of their weight in steel beneath those traveling cloaks. Adare had only her coin purse and the blindfold secreted beneath her robe.

  Just a little farther, she told herself. A little farther and it won’t matter who saw.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been running, but suddenly she was almost there, almost to the narrow spillover people called the Chute. The Chute wasn’t a proper canal. Unlike the half-dozen waterways that spread out from the Basin to the north, east, and west, all wide enough to permit the narrow canal vessels for which they had been dug, the side channel was barely six paces across, a miniature waterfall constructed to drain off the excess power of the canal’s current so that the other channels snaking through the city might flow more placidly.

  On other visits to the Basin and the Lowmarket, Adare had seen grinning, naked children riding the Chute. They would leap in from the bridge above, then let the frothing current carry them away west, out of sight between buildings cantilevered out over the water. It had looked easy, fun. As she hoisted herself onto the wide, low balustrade, however, she froze, staring in dismay at the water below. She had remembered a short drop, maybe a few paces, into a swift, refreshing current. Her memory, evidently, had failed her.