The Providence of Fire

by Brian Staveley

  The one named Manderseen chuckled. “Maybe we should let her go.”

  “Maybe,” Matol replied, pretending to consider the notion. Then he shook his head. “Nah. Let’s hurt her some more.”

  What happened next took place too quickly to comprehend. Kaden was focused on the scene as Matol reached for her wrist, his mind sketching the saama’an. It wasn’t until later, however, when he had a chance to fully scrutinize the vision, that he really saw what had happened. Even then it didn’t make sense.

  Triste, practically gibbering with terror a moment before, twisted as Matol reached for her. The manacle didn’t afford much freedom, but as his hand started to close, she lashed out and caught his wrist instead. The movement was precise, almost too quick to see, like a serpent darting from a bush. Matol didn’t have a chance to register surprise before she pulled, a savage tug somehow strong enough to yank the man off his balance, tumbling him half on top of her, forcing Manderseen to drop the lantern with a curse and fall backward. Triste leaned close to the Ishien commander, her lips by his ear.

  “A time will come,” she hissed in a voice every bit as cold and dark as the surrounding stone, a voice utterly devoid of fear, “when the pain you visit on me here will seem a dream of pleasure, when blades and fire seem tender ministrations to you. I will, then, watch you beg, but stoppered to your cries will be my ears, and dried to dust the wide lake of my mercy.”

  She was twisting, Kaden realized, her slender fingers twisting Matol’s broad hand with a savage strength until something snapped, the man’s face contorted, and, his balance regained at last, he lurched toward the wall, cradling the broken hand and cursing.

  The whole thing lasted several breaths, but Rampuri Tan made no move to intervene, neither to stop Triste nor to help Manderseen or Matol. His eyes remained on the girl the entire time, measuring, parsing.

  “Did you see?” he murmured when it was done.

  Kaden nodded dumbly. He could only stare. For a moment Triste locked eyes with him, and her gaze was … what? He groped for the word. Feral? Regal? Language failed. Then, like water slipping through a sieve, the look drained away.

  “Kaden?” she whispered, voice small and shattered, filled with fear once more. “Kaden, please. Please help me.”

  For a moment, no one moved. Shock had scrubbed the smirk from Manderseen’s face, and he stared at Triste, baffled. Tan also watched the girl, though with none of the Ishien’s confusion, as did Kiel, his eyes still as pools, tied arms relaxed before him, supported by the frozen guards at his side. Triste looked from one face to the next, evidently reading the confusion and slow-gathering fury scribbled through the expressions of the Ishien.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”

  The words seemed to jar Matol from a waking dream. He raised his broken hand, staring at it a moment as though it were some small creature broken in a trap, then turned his gaze on Triste.

  “Oh yes,” he said, stepping toward her once again. The pain from his mangled hand must have been excruciating, but he ignored it, gesturing instead to Manderseen. “Oh yes, indeed. Bring me something hot, or hard, or sharp,” he barked. “Better yet, all three. I’m through lavishing this bitch in gentle caresses. It’s time to cut her deep, to see what’s really inside.”

  “No,” Kaden said, surprised to hear the syllable slip from his own throat. It was madness to intervene, suicide, especially now, especially with Matol caught in the grip of this new, cold rage. And yet, he found himself stepping forward. “This isn’t working,” he said. “Your whole approach isn’t working.”

  “Stand aside, Kaden,” Tan said. His voice was quiet, but the syllables were built of stone.

  Kaden shook his head. “I’ve stood aside for days. Longer.” He could feel the blood racing in his veins, started to slow it, then let it run. He could kill the emotion, but he needed it now, needed his own anger if he was going to hold his ground against Matol and the rest, if he was going to do anything for Triste.

  “I understand that she’s not what she seems,” he said. “I see it now. I understand that she may even be Csestriim, but this”—he gestured to the hard, bloody tools—“is not the way. It is not working.”

  Matol turned from Triste to stare at him. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “You come here, to my fortress, into my Heart, you bring this inhuman whore into this sanctuary, and then you defend her? Hmm?”

  “I’m not defending her—” Kaden began.

  Matol cut him off. “You think you’re going to tell me, tell me how to fight this fight when your own family just up and quit? Is that it?”

  “Enough,” Tan said.

  “Oh, I quite agree,” Matol replied, still quiet, still sharp. “It is enough. It is well past enough.”

  “Take him,” he said, gesturing to Kaden. “Find him a cell down below along with the other one.” A finger flicked at Kiel. “Something with a heavy door.”

  Manderseen stepped forward, but Kaden twisted away, unsure whether he wanted to put himself between Triste and the Ishien or use the chair to which she was shackled as a shield. She was watching him with huge, frightened eyes. Kiel, too, was watching him, silent and impassive from across the room.

  “Tan,” Kaden said, trying to find the words.

  “Get over here,” Manderseen spat.

  Slowly, slowly, Rampuri Tan shook his head. “This was your choice. Not mine.”

  Kaden seized a knife from the table at Triste’s side, brandishing it before him. He had no idea how to fight, but he had watched Valyn and the others back in the mountains, had carved the images on his brain for future use, and as the Ishien guard came on he tried to approximate the pose.

  Manderseen paused, then unlimbered the sword at his side, the grin coming back to his face. “Kill him?”

  Matol didn’t answer. Kaden risked a glance behind him just as a fist took him across the face, knocking him clean into the wall. The attack jarred the knife from his hand, and Manderseen was on him in a moment, all steel and strength, shoving Kaden’s body against the stone.

  “Kill him?” he asked again.

  Kaden struggled to turn, to see Matol, but Manderseen had his head shoved over at a brutal angle. The only person he could see was Kiel. The Csestriim had made no move to struggle or intervene, but as Kaden watched, his lips moved silently, mouthing the shape of words. Everyone else was staring at Kaden. Only Kaden was watching Kiel, even as he strained to breathe.

  He’s talking to me, he realized. That the man expected him to follow, to be able to unfold the shape of the words, seemed unbelievable. Kaden himself was bleeding from the head, blood slick on his face, and the Ishien sword was at his throat. Kiel ignored all of it. If he really had known Kaden’s father, then he knew something of the monks, and if he knew the monks, knew about the training and discipline, then he knew about the Carved Mind. He knew Kaden would remember the scene later. Remember it perfectly.

  “I would not kill him.” Tan’s voice this time. Distant. Indifferent. “He is the Emperor, and may prove useful still.”

  “I could take out an eye,” Manderseen suggested with a chuckle, shifting a hand to press against Kaden’s eyeball. “Maybe crush one of his nuts. What were you saying about cocks?” He groped between Kaden’s legs. “We could see how loyal he is to this bitch after we rip his cock off.…”

  Silence loud as a scream.

  “Take him below,” Matol snarled finally. “Lock him up with the Csestriim. He may know more than he’s told us. We’ll take a look at his blood after we get through with hers.”

  16

  “Kill them,” Annick said, gesturing to the Urghul. “We can’t bring them, and we can’t leave them.”

  Valyn had gathered his Wing a hundred paces off from the camp, leaving Pyrre to guard the tied and kneeling prisoners. In the three days since they sent Suant’ra south, there had been little to do but wait, rest, and worry. To Valyn’s great relief, Gwenna had come to by the end of
the first day, but she was clearly in no shape to travel; she could barely walk a circuit of the camp without feeling dizzy and nauseated. Talal’s leg was healing, healing faster than Valyn would have expected, and Valyn’s own wound was already knitted closed. The slarn eggs, the leach suggested. It’s possible they made us stronger, more resilient. Valyn had mulled that possibility with a mixture of hope and unease. Talal was right. A deep puncture wound to the shoulder should have taken at least a week to knit up properly, not days.

  On the other hand, they were hardly invincible. Talal still limped, Gwenna still slept more than half the hours of the day, and truth be told, Valyn wasn’t sure he was ready for a forced ride across a thousand miles of steppe either. Pain lanced through his shoulder whenever he raised his elbow, which meant fighting with a single blade and forget about the bow.

  So, they waited, rested, and worried.

  On the second day, another Kettral Wing passed overhead. Valyn hunched down into his bison cloak, shaded his face with his hand, and tried to look Urghul while the bird circled once, then headed south. He let out a long, uneasy breath, feeling like one of the marmots that foraged for food on the grasslands. They, too, kept looking up at the sky, not that it did them much good. Valyn had seen three taken by eagles in a single afternoon.

  By the third day, Gwenna was insisting she was ready to ride, and Valyn himself was itching to get moving, pain or no. They were already going to miss the meeting with Kaden back in Annur, miss it by weeks, but that was no reason to sit any longer than necessary. Valyn insisted on one more night of rest, and on the morning of the fourth day he gave the order to set out.

  It was easy enough to break down what they wanted from the camp, to put the horses on long lines, and pack a week’s worth of extra food, compliments of the Urghul. Then they needed to decide what to do with the Urghul themselves. That was proving a more difficult proposition.

  “I don’t like it,” Laith said, shaking his head. He’d lost his habitual good humor when ’Ra left, and the question of the prisoners had done nothing to lighten his mood. “In fact, I fucking hate it. Three of them are kids, and the rest…” He gestured at the kneeling figures. “It’s not like we’re killing them in a fight.” He blew out a long breath. “But we have to do it. We have to kill them.”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” Gwenna growled.

  Valyn nodded slowly. “Gwenna’s right. Whatever Hendran said on the matter, they are our prisoners, our responsibility. It’s our decision.”

  “Fine,” Laith said, “then I’ve decided that we need to kill them. Is that enough responsibility for you?”

  “No,” Valyn replied, reining in his own anger, keeping his voice level. “It’s not. You said it already. Three of them are kids, Laith. Children.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Annick said. “Taking them with us is too risky, and if we leave them, they could follow.”

  “On what?” Valyn demanded. “We’re taking the ’Kent-kissing horses. I don’t care how fit these sons of bitches are, by the end of the morning we’ll be gone.”

  “And what if they talk?” Laith demanded. “What if another batch of Urghul finds them and asks what happened to their horses?”

  “Then we’ll fight them,” Gwenna said. “We already fought these, and it was a pretty short fucking fight.”

  Annick shook her head, a curt, dismissive motion. “This is a tiny group. Some of the taamu number into the hundreds.”

  “Then we run,” Gwenna insisted. “We retreat.”

  Laith barked an incredulous laugh. “We outride the ’Kent-kissing Urghul on their own steppe on their own horses? How do you expect that to go?”

  Valyn took a deep breath, then spoke. “This is beside the point.”

  “Seems to me it’s exactly the point,” Laith said. “What are the risks? How do we minimize them? I seem to remember an entire year spent studying this shit back on the Islands.”

  “We talked about minimizing risks in legitimate fights,” Valyn said. “Not about murdering kids who can’t hurt us.”

  “What is a legitimate fight?” Annick asked.

  “A mission,” Valyn said. “Against the enemy. Not just an uncomfortable situation we crashed into the middle of.”

  “The Urghul are the enemy,” Laith pointed out. “They boil people alive. They cut off your eyelids. The Eyrie has been flying missions over the White for years now.”

  “Not to kill kids,” Valyn replied. He held up a hand to forestall the flier’s objection. “Why did you join the Kettral?”

  Laith shook his head. “I don’t know. Because they showed up and told me I could fly massive killer birds. Because they’re the Kettral, for ’Shael’s sake.”

  “And if the Urghul had birds? Would you fly for the Urghul?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Everything I just got done telling you. They’re barbarians, Valyn. Do you remember anything about their religion, their blood worship? If our fight had gone the other way, they’d be flaying us right now, taking us apart strip by fleshy strip. That’s why we have to kill them.”

  Valyn shook his head. “That’s why we can’t.”

  Laith stared. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  It was one question too many, and something inside Valyn, some wall that had been holding back both the anger and the words, gave way, crumbling as though before a great wave. “We are not them, Laith!” he shouted. “We are not her!” he went on, stabbing a finger at Huutsuu, “or her!” at Pyrre. “We can kill people, sure. We spent a whole lot of time learning to kill people, and we’re good at it. But lots of people can kill people. Pyrre has been fucking killing people since the day we found her. The thing that makes us Kettral is something else: we kill the right people.”

  Gwenna was nodding furiously, but Annick brushed aside the tirade with the back of her hand. “Right and wrong. Just a question of which side you’re on.”

  “No,” Valyn said, rounding on her. “No, it’s not. If that’s true, then why did we even come here? Why did we leave the Eyrie and rescue Kaden? Why do we give a pickled shit who sits on the Unhewn Throne? If it doesn’t matter, we could hire out right now as mercenaries to Anthera or the Manjari. We could make a tidy fortune telling them everything we know about the Kettral!” Despite the chill breeze, he was sweating beneath the heavy bison coat. With an effort, he brought his voice back down, unclenched his fists. “We don’t do that because it does matter what side you fight on. It does matter who sits the Unhewn Throne. People like Sami Yurl and Balendin—they need to be stopped. They are bad. So were the Csestriim. So were the Atmani.” He shook his head, suddenly weary. The shoulder wound ached. Everything ached. “I joined the Kettral so I could defend Annur, and I wanted to defend Annur because it is better than the Blood Cities or Anthera, better than the Manjari or the tribes of the Waist.”

  “Spare me a lecture on the virtues of our great empire,” Laith said. The words were dismissive, but the fire had gone out of his resistance.

  “It’s a short lecture,” Valyn said. “We have laws. Laws that keep the most powerful among us from destroying the weak and the unlucky.”

  Laith shook his head. “You really did grow up in a palace, didn’t you?”

  “Am I right?” Valyn asked, ignoring the gibe.

  “Annur’s great and powerful exploit the weak and poor all the time,” the flier snapped. “I know, my family is both. Your father raised taxes on blacksmiths—did you know that?” He didn’t wait for Valyn to answer. “Of course you didn’t. The thing is, the Emperor of Annur didn’t bother differentiating between the huge city blacksmiths with dozens of apprentices and small shops with one man and a forge. A little oversight that put my father into debt.” He shook his head in disgust. “My father went to a moneylender. The bastard was happy enough to supply the coin but at a rate no human being could possibly repay. My father worked eight years at it, eight years without a single day of rest, and he
died at his fucking forge, more in debt than when he started.”

  Valyn stared. In all his years with the Kettral, in all their days of training and nights nursing their wounds, he’d never heard Laith tell the story.

  “Look,” he began slowly, uncertain how to respond. “The empire isn’t a perfect state…”

  The flier raised his brows. “But this was unusual? The exception?” He jerked a finger at Talal. “What about him? The citizens of our good and noble empire hunt down and kill leaches in huge, gleeful mobs. No trial, no law—just a fire or a rope.”

  Talal nodded slowly. He hadn’t said a word throughout the entire argument, watching silently, arms crossed over his chest. “Annur has flaws,” he said quietly. “Deep flaws. There are liars and murderers to go around.” He glanced over toward the prisoners. “I do not want to be one of them.”

  “Well, fuck,” Laith said, shaking his head. “Neither do I. I just don’t want them coming after us.”

  “That’s the chance we take for doing the right thing.”

  “Fuck,” the flier said again.

  “Does that mean you agree?”

  Laith blew out a long breath, then nodded reluctantly. Valyn turned to Annick.

  “What about you?”

  “I told you what I think,” she said. “You’re the Wing leader.”

  “All right then,” Valyn said. “We take the horses, take most of the food, take an api so that we look like real Urghul. I’ll retie the knots holding the prisoners, something they can wriggle out of in two or three days. We head north.…”

  “I thought we were going west,” Gwenna said. “There’s nothing north but steppe, then ice, then icy ocean.”

  “We head north,” Valyn said again, “half a day, in case they decide to follow our tracks. We’ll tack west when we find a stream to follow.”

  He turned on his heel before anyone else could object, leaving his Wing to their preparations. The prisoners were on the other side of the camp, giving Huutsuu plenty of time to stare at Valyn as he approached. Pyrre glanced over when he was close.