The Providence of Fire

by Brian Staveley

  “Holy Hull,” Talal breathed.

  Valyn could only nod as the great balance of the log raft began to flex, then give way, the pilings that had originally blocked its passage suddenly and utterly obliterated. The riders who had been approaching the makeshift bridge just before it blew reined back their terrified mounts, scrabbling for the dubious safety of the shore while logs the size of a man’s leg still clattered to earth, stabbing into the mud, cracking open on the harder ground beyond.

  Laith let out a savage whoop, the sound lost in the greater chaos. “Gwenna, you vicious, redheaded genius!” he cheered. “That’s our demo woman!” he shouted, seizing Valyn by the shoulder in his celebration, stabbing his finger at the wreckage of the bridge. “She did that!”

  “But how?” Valyn asked slowly. “Where is she?”

  Talal’s face was sober. “The charge was triggered from beneath. You can see from the blow pattern.”

  “Which means she went under,” Valyn said, staring at the insane mass of splintered logs, huge, jagged shards with the whole pent-up weight of the angry river behind them. The east channel was a churning wreckage of blasted bodies and spinning trunks. The channel had become Ananshael’s own sword. If Gwenna were there, and she had to be … “She’s dead,” Valyn said. The words left him hollow. “Gwenna’s dead.”

  Laith stared for a second, then shoved him away. “You don’t know that.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Valyn spat, “but use your fucking eyes.” He stabbed a finger at the river. “Could you swim that out?”

  “We don’t know,” Laith insisted. Then more quietly, “Even if she is dead, she did what she needed to do.”

  “Part of it,” Valyn amended, pointing toward the center bridge. It felt like a heartless thing to say, but having too much heart in the middle of a battle was just a way to get dead. “She blew the dam, but the Urghul can still cross from the east island to the west.”

  Talal was staring through the long lens. “At a quick count, I put about three hundred on the east island.”

  “Making it an even fight at the bridge,” Valyn said.

  “An even fight,” Talal said quietly, “except that it’s three hundred of Long Fist’s best and bravest against a bunch of loggers and a half dozen of il Tornja’s scouts.”

  The new battle line was already forming up at the west end of the central bridge, just a hundred paces from the base of their tower. The loggers had erected another hasty barricade there as well, a waist-high wall of logs with archers spread out on either side. It was a good position. They could rake the Urghul on the bridge with arrows as they crossed, and the bridge itself made it difficult for the mounted riders to come at them more than two abreast.

  A good spot, Valyn amended silently, in the middle of a disastrous fucking mess.

  It had taken the Urghul less than an hour to cross the eastern channel and seize half the village. The loggers were making a good show of it, but they were poorly armed and, judging by their dangerously ragged ranks on the near shore, close to breaking. Gwenna’s sacrifice had won them a momentary respite from the full weight of the Urghul force, but even that respite might not matter. As he watched, one rider managed to cross nearly the whole center span, crumbling just as he reached the barricade, an arrow in his eye. Annick’s work, no doubt, but Annick couldn’t shoot them all.

  “Fuck this,” Laith said. “I’m going down.”

  “Il Tornja—” Valyn began.

  “Il Tornja is your ’Kent-kissing obsession,” the flier spat. “You kill him.”

  All at once, Valyn’s shame and helplessness, his resolve and uncertainty boiled over in a burning wash of black fury. Since the Wing was formed back on the Islands, Laith had done nothing but go with his gut, flying his way, fighting his way, ignoring orders when it suited him, and to Hull with whatever it did to the rest of the Wing. The son of a bitch seemed to think that just because he was quick with a joke and a pat on the back, everything would work out, that people would overlook all the damage caused by his recklessness. Valyn wanted to seize the flier by the throat and pound some discipline into him, and he half rose, moving toward him, when Talal put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It might be best,” the leach said quietly. “Two of us should be enough to finish il Tornja, and Annick and Pyrre could use some help down there, someone else to put a little backbone into the local folk.”

  Valyn remained in his half crouch for a moment, then spat over the edge of the tower and sat back. He looked at the flier and shook his head.

  “Good luck,” he said, voice cold as the dark water lapping the cliff below.

  Laith considered him warily. “What do you want me to tell them down there? About you? What do you want me to tell Annick?”

  Valyn hesitated. “Tell them I’m dead,” he said finally.

  The flier locked eyes with him a moment, then snorted in disgust. “Yeah, that fits. You might as well be.”

  * * *

  It might have been a page from one of the textbooks back on the Islands, something from a chapter on morale, about the power of a single determined warrior to stiffen the resolve of an entire unit. Laith reached the bridge at a crucial point, just as a knot of horsemen were about to breach the barricade, and he threw himself into the fight with a fury, vaulting over the logs, hamstringing the first two horses, and splitting the skull of one of the fallen riders. Without glancing back to see who was following, the flier pressed on across, sliding between the horses, slitting tendons and throats with equal ease.

  Annick and the other archers covered him, and moments later Pyrre appeared at his side. It seemed impossible that the two of them could hold the span against hundreds, but the Urghul were used to fighting on the wide steppe where they could use the speed of their horses and the length of their spears. The narrow space of the bridge worked against them, as did the darkness, and the constant rain of arrows. Laith and Pyrre turned back the assault, and then, while the Urghul withdrew in dismay, they retreated behind the barricade.

  Valyn watched it all through the long lens, his stomach churning with a bilious mix of worry, fierce pride, and bitter resentment. Once again Laith had ignored orders and broken ranks, choosing to do just what suited him. He was a rogue, a renegade, a ’Shael-spawned menace … but then why, looking down on the vicious fight, did Valyn feel like the fraud and the failure? Professionals held to the mission. That mantra had been drilled into him ten thousand times. Professionals didn’t go needlessly off script. And yet, lying on the cold roof, so close to the fight and so far away, he felt anything but professional. He wanted to scream, but the mission dictated silence, so he held his peace and watched.

  Seven times the Urghul came, and seven times the villagers held them, Laith and Pyrre at the forefront, swords and knives a moonlit scribbling of quicksilver. Pyrre moved like a shadow between the mounted riders, never seeming to hurry, always just beneath the attacker’s thrust, just to the side of it, pivoting or twisting to slide her knife into a neck or rib cage with all the delicacy of a dancer. Laith, on the other hand, was a whirlwind of blades, a maelstrom of savage hacking and slicing, a storm come among the Urghul. Valyn had seen the flier fight before, hundreds of times, but never like this. Laith moved as though possessed, unflagging, untiring, as though he could hold the bridge for days, months, as though nothing could cut him down.

  Then the arrow took him through the lower back.

  It was bound to happen sooner or later. The villagers weren’t snipers. They were terrified. They couldn’t see in the darkness like Kettral. Probably the man or woman who loosed the arrow didn’t even see it strike, but Valyn saw it, saw the shaft punch in just below the ribs. Straight through the gut. Maybe the liver.

  “No,” Talal breathed next to him, seeing the same thing.

  Valyn closed his eyes, but the sounds of screaming horses and dying men battered against his ears. Somewhere swaddled in that chorus of pain and death was Laith’s voice. Valyn couldn’t hear it, bu
t knew how it sounded all the same, a defiant howl, a furious roar. He opened his lids again to see Laith on his feet, refusing to retreat, swinging his double blades in a narrowed ambit. Valyn wanted to bellow at the flier to get back, to fall behind the barricade, but the flier would never hear him. And Laith had never listened anyway.

  Hot tears sheeted down Valyn’s cheeks. His heart felt like a stone inside of him, like something that had never been alive.

  As he watched, an Urghul spear took Laith through the chest, lifting him up, up. The horseman fell to one of Annick’s arrows, but another of the Urghul was already there, leaning precariously over his horse’s back to slash down with his sword into Laith’s shoulder. Valyn forced himself to keep his eyes open, to witness, as though that would do any good, but even the witness was denied him. Drenched in blood, still clutching the spear sunk in his heart, Laith crumpled beneath the press of horses, then vanished from view.

  “Laith.” Valyn wasn’t sure he’d said his friend’s name aloud.

  “May Ananshael be gentle with his soul,” Talal murmured quietly.

  Valyn shook his head. Madness filled the bridge, chaos and blood and pain—Ananshael’s hand, and it was anything but gentle.

  45

  The Shin chapterhouse looked just as it had days earlier—featureless brick walls, shuttered windows, and a blank wooden door. Of course, it was hard to make out the details from behind the dust-streaked windows of the vacant house.

  Behind him, in the wide, pine-paneled room, the members of his would-be council shifted warily. Gabril, Kiel, and Triste had been confused when Kaden led them there several hours earlier, forcing the back door open, then searching the inside of the house until he found the room he wanted, the one facing the square.

  “Why are we here?” the First Speaker had asked, turning to take in the moldering space.

  “This is where we’re meeting the others,” Kaden replied.

  Gabril stared. “I told them to meet in the chapterhouse.”

  “And I told them, in the notes you delivered, to ignore that, to meet here.”

  Triste was shaking her head in confusion. “Why?”

  “Because the chapterhouse isn’t safe,” Kaden replied. “It’s easier to see than to explain. Here,” he said, gesturing to the mouse-eaten furniture strewn across the room, “help me set these chairs up near the window so people have somewhere to sit.”

  As it turned out, most of the scions of Annur’s great and powerful families, when they finally arrived, preferred to stand. If anything, they seemed to distrust one another more than at their previous meeting. Hands rarely strayed far from knives or swords, and everyone seemed to want a back to the wall. Only Kegellen had availed herself of a chair, subsiding into it with a contented sigh, then propping her feet on another. If she was content, however, the others were not.

  “We have been here the better part of an hour,” Tevis snapped finally, “and you have said nothing, done nothing, except stare out these ’Kent-kissing windows. I begin to lose my patience.”

  “I suspect,” Kegellen replied languidly, “that you never had much to begin with.” While the others had arrived in various approximations of monastic garb, Kegellen had made no effort to disguise herself. She wore a dress of the brightest yellow, fresh jasmine garlands around both wrists, and a headdress of peacock feathers that fluttered in the breeze. The ensemble struck Kaden as gaudy in the extreme, almost ludicrous, but he noticed that none of the others seated around the long table stared or laughed. The woman might have been all alone, fanning herself gently with an elegantly painted fan. She paused in the motion, then gestured toward the window.

  “I, for one, appreciate the opportunity to look out over a quiet square. After all, it is these neighborhood squares, this one and scores like it scattered throughout the streets, that make up the true heart of our great city.” She flicked the fan once more. “Look there at the tiny temple, or there, at that pale-skinned woman selling figs, or at the darling roses climbing the trellis outside the wine shop.…”

  “I don’t give a fuck for some pauper’s wine shop,” Tevis snapped. “Or for the ’Shael-spawned figs.”

  For once, Kaden found himself agreeing with the Nishan. The fig vendor and the wine merchant were irrelevant. It was the view over the square itself, and of the Shin chapterhouse in particular, that was crucial. He needed to see what was about to happen, and, more important, he needed them to see.

  As he had hoped, Triste’s trip to the chapterhouse two days prior had gone without incident. She knocked on the door, delivered the note penned in Kaden’s own hand, and left. She said that she’d spent half the walk back to the Temple of Pleasure glancing over her shoulder and the other half running, but no one had accosted her, and as far as she could tell no one had followed her, either.

  Kaden hoped that she was wrong.

  For the twentieth time, he went over the plan. It would have been so much simpler to just fight, to attack the Ishien, then Adiv, then il Tornja and Adare, to keep attacking and attacking and attacking until his foes were dead or he was. It might even have been possible with Valyn’s Wing at his back, but Valyn had never reached the meeting point. For all Kaden knew, Valyn had never escaped Assare. He put the grief from his mind, focusing on what mattered: he had no Kettral, no way to attack, nothing. It seemed too much to hope that he might take up that nothingness and use it as a weapon.

  The memory of Gabril sparring in the courtyard of his palace filled Kaden’s mind once more. He watched the motion of the robe as the soldiers circled, watched those long spears stab out, testing, probing. Gabril had offered no resistance—that was the whole point—letting the mistakes of his men lead them to their doom. Yielding, too, offered a way to victory. Of course, it could offer a quick path to death as well. Kaden took a deep breath, and turned back to the assembled aristocrats, wondering which path he had chosen.

  “I’ve given Tarik Adiv your names,” he said, keeping his voice level, calm.

  Toward the back of the room, Kiel raised his eyebrows. Triste gasped. A snarl of shock, then a hiss went up from the assembled nobility, dismay and disbelief twisting their faces. After a moment, appalled stares gave way to exclamation and protest, accusatory fingers and a furious clamor of voices. Kaden forced himself to wait, to allow their anger to mount, to let the tension stretch to the point of breaking. For this to work, he needed them scared.

  Tevis, however, looked anything but scared. “You worthless shit,” he snarled, hand groping for the rapier at his belt. Gabril started to slide in front of Kaden, but Kaden waved him away, stepping forward to meet the Nishan’s advance. Tevis’s hand closed around his throat, cutting off the air. Kaden slowed his heart, forced his muscles to relax, glanced over the man’s shoulder to lock eyes with Kegellen. Her gaze had gone hard at the revelation, but after a moment she waved a glittering hand.

  “Set him down, Tevis,” she said. “We had best learn the full extent of this foolishness. You can always tear his throat out later.”

  The nobleman pulled Kaden close to him, his eyes wide with fury, tendons in his neck strained to bursting, then tossed him to the floor. Kaden picked himself up slowly, surreptitiously testing the muscles of his neck. They were bruised, but he’d had worse dozens of times over at the hands of various umials. When he finally straightened, he found all eyes fixed on him, gazes sharp as spearpoints.

  “Now,” Kegellen continued, her voice deceptively mild, “why don’t you explain to us just what sort of mischief you’ve been up to.” She smiled.

  Kaden gathered his thoughts. “I’ve made sure that Adiv knows I’ve returned to the city, made sure he knows your names and our intention of overthrowing the empire, our desire to install a republic in its place.”

  “It is hardly ‘our’ intention,” said Azurtazine, tapping her long, painted nails against the surface of the table, “if I recall our last meeting correctly.”

  Kaden smiled. “I omitted that detail. Adiv believes we are of
one mind, unified and ready to move against him.”

  “I knew I should have cut your throat in the warehouse,” Tevis spat. “I don’t intend to repeat the lapse.”

  “Cutting my throat now will do little to alleviate the problem,” Kaden observed. “Adiv has your names already. He is unlikely to forget them.”

  “May I assume,” Kegellen cut in, “that you’ve engaged in this little … stunt for some purpose other than your own amusement?”

  “My purpose,” Kaden replied evenly, “is to show you the truth.”

  Kegellen pouted. “Truth. Such a tricky word.”

  As though punctuating her remark, a great gong rang out, shivering the air, echoed across the rooftops by dozens more, all of them tolling the noon hour. Kaden turned to the window, gesturing toward the small square and the Shin chapterhouse beyond. It was time to see if his own quiet fight would play out as he’d hoped.

  “Watch,” he said, gesturing to the sunbaked plaza.

  For a few heartbeats there was silence. On the cobbles below, men and women went about their midday chores and errands, calling out to one another in greeting or irritation.

  “And what,” Kegellen asked finally, “are we watching?”

  Kaden’s stomach clenched, his shoulders tensed. With an effort he smoothed away the worry. It wouldn’t happen right away. Even after the noon gongs, some sort of pause was to be expected. He scanned the square below, searching for any sign, a hint of steel, the clank of armor. Nothing. What would be the consequence, he wondered, if he were wrong? So much hinged on his ability to inhabit the minds of men about whom he knew so little. The beshra’an had allowed him to track goats through the mountains, but Adiv was no goat. Matol was no goat. What if one or the other had seen through his trap? What if, even as he watched, they were deploying some elaborate scheme of their own?