Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne 02 - The Providence of Fire:

by Brian Staveley

  Valyn tried to weigh his response.

  “Besides,” the Flea added, “you might as well talk to me now. I can hear you muttering down there.”

  Valyn took a deep breath. He’d given away his position, but maybe a little conversation would buy time for Kaden. “The thing is,” he replied loudly, thinking back to the mountain pass days earlier, to the way he’d naïvely ordered his people to surrender their weapons, “trust hasn’t been working out too well for me recently.”

  The Flea chuckled. “Looked like it worked out even less well for the men you were trusting.”

  “Yeah, well, we got lucky.”

  “Why don’t you put down your weapons, and you can tell me about it.” Valyn tensed. He wanted to believe the man, but he’d be shipped to ’Shael before he willingly disarmed again. Right now they could still maneuver, bargain, fight. Without weapons . . . well, he didn’t intend to throw the dice more than he had to.

  When they reached the gate, Tan started talking to Kaden.

  “Picture the bird,” he began slowly.

  “What?” Valyn demanded.

  “It’s a mental exercise,” Kaden said quietly.

  Valyn shook his head. “Fuck the fucking bird,” he spat, “and get out of here. The Flea’s all sweetness and small talk now, but he’s not going to keep talking forever.”

  The older monk turned that stony gaze on Valyn. “If Kaden steps through the gate without the necessary preparation, he will cease. It cannot be rushed.”

  Valyn flexed and unflexed his sword hand. He could feel his luck flexing, straining, starting to splinter with each hammering heartbeat. “How long?”

  “More time, the more you talk.”

  Valyn bit back a retort. He couldn’t help Kaden, but he could use the time to prepare for the coming storm. Pivoting on his stomach, he scanned the room. Pyrre’s disappearance worried him. The woman seemed to be on his side, but according to Kaden she’d already murdered one monk just for slowing things down. With any luck, the flashbangs had knocked her out a window, but luck didn’t seem to be in much supply, and Valyn didn’t like the idea of the Skullsworn prowling around where he couldn’t keep an eye on her.

  But then, what’s to like?

  Gwenna was gesturing toward him furiously, evidently confused by the delay. Annick held her position like a statue while Talal and Laith had split up, moving to opposite walls. Stand by. . . . Valyn signed. Blowing the floor was a way out, but a risky one. As long as the Flea was still trying to negotiate, there was still a chance they’d all walk away without violence. As long as he stayed on the ’Kent-kissing roof.

  “I’m not ordering my people to disarm,” Valyn said. “That’s something else you taught me. But I don’t mind talking. You keep your people up there. I’ll keep my people down here. Very civilized.”

  “Works for me,” the Flea replied.

  “Now,” Tan murmured to Kaden, “when the bird has flown from sight, fill your mind with the sky and step through the gate.”

  Valyn risked a glance over his shoulder to see Kaden’s eyes, only a foot away but somehow impossibly distant, bright as coals from the forge, cold as the stars. His brother nodded once, then rose to his feet, disappearing into the smoke. It was only a step to the wall and then he was gone.

  “Did it work?” Valyn hissed at the other monk. “Did he make it?”

  “I will know when I reach the other side,” Tan replied, then closed his own eyes, evidently in preparation.

  Across the room Triste was stirring. Valyn still hadn’t figured out how to handle her. He tried to run through the options. She was small, light enough to carry, but that would slow him down considerably. They could leave her to the Flea, use her as a diversion. She raised her head slowly, eyes baffled and full of fear. Valyn was about to motion to her to stay low, to keep quiet, when a pair of black boots hit the floor behind her.

  “Company!” Laith shouted. “North window!”

  Triste turned, screamed, then lunged to her feet, plunging through the smoke directly toward Valyn and Tan. She passed by coughing, flailing, close enough that Valyn was able to put out a hand, to feel the cloth of her borrowed uniform pass between his fingers. Then, suddenly, she was gone.

  The gate, Valyn realized, ice in his stomach. She went through the gate, and with none of Kaden’s preparation.

  “She’s gone,” Tan said. If he felt at all sorry for the girl’s annihilation, he didn’t show it. “See to your own.”

  Then the monk rose into the smoke, stepped forward, and vanished.

  Gone. The two monks and Triste. The Emperor was safe.

  Valyn spun back to face the attacker. So all the Flea’s offers of talk had been bullshit, a ruse. Valyn drew his second blade, ready to hurl himself at the attacker, then paused. There was something about those boots; Pyrre’s boots.

  “Wait, Gwenna,” he shouted, rolling away from the gate. “They’re not . . .” Too late. The charges were already exploding, sharp cracks followed by the deafening rumble of stone folding in on itself. Valyn took a bearing on the location of the hole, cursing to himself as he slid into a crouch, readying himself to jump as soon as the rumbling ceased. If they’d had any hope of talking their way free, it was over now, or as good as. The only thing now was to get out, to get clear.

  Only, the rumbling didn’t stop. The whole building was shuddering beneath him now, stone falling from the ceiling at the same time as the floor dropped away. He couldn’t see a ’Kent-kissing thing, shrouded as he was in smoke, but he could hear the structure protesting. He took a tentative step backward, away from the source of the explosion, and then, with a sickening lurch, the stone beneath his feet gave way.

  9

  Go over it again,” Nira said, prodding Adare in the gut with her cane.

  Adare tried to swat it away, but the old woman was too fast, swinging the stick clear in a wide arc, then swatting her across the backside. The treatment was infuriating, humiliating, and terrifying all at once, but somehow Nira had ferreted out her identity, which meant that, until Adare found a solution to the problem, she had no choice but to endure the endless cursing and the welts crisscrossing her ass.

  “Again,” Nira insisted.

  The second morning of the pilgrimage should have been pleasant—the air was cool and damp, the sun warm overhead, the reek of the city giving way to the smell of grass and dirt and growing things. The buildings were gone, replaced by wide fields, open sky, and the green-brown thread of the canal flowing out of the south, bearing colorful, narrow boats loaded high and bound for Annur. Adare couldn’t see all the far-off details through her blindfold, but she could make out the colors, the generous contours of the countryside, the space.

  It was tempting to believe she had escaped, had eluded il Tornja’s reach when she slipped the boundaries of the city, but whenever she glanced over her shoulder she could still see Intarra’s Spear, surface dazzling with refracted sunlight, a glass needle bisecting the northern sky. It had been her home for twenty years. Now the sight of the tower made her hands sweat. She tried not to look back.

  Oshi rode atop the wagon, wrists protruding like sticks from his golden pilgrim’s robe, eyes fixed on a pear he had been holding, uneaten, for hours. He chewed at the inside of his slack cheek and hummed tunelessly as he considered his fruit. Nira walked alongside, occasionally clucking her tongue at the team of water buffalo. They had fallen into a wide gap between the pilgrims ahead and those following behind, a space large enough that Adare could almost forget that in order to flee from one foe, she had surrounded herself with a group of others. It would have been nice to forget. Unfortunately, Nira was having none of it.

  “Get going, girl,” she said, thumping her cane against the side of the wagon.

  “My name is Dorellin,” Adare said wearily. “My father is a merchant. . . .”

  “What does he sell?”

  “Cloth.”

  “What kinda cloth?”

  “Si’ite silk, pri
marily, although he supplements his trade with double-dyed wool from up north.”

  Nira blew out an exasperated breath. “Meshkent’s great buggering cock, but you’re a thickheaded bitch.”

  Adare colored with confusion and anger.

  “What, exactly, is the problem with importing wool and silk?” she demanded, her irritation getting the better of her fear.

  “Primarily,” Nira replied, ticking the word off on a gnarled finger. “Supplements. Importing.”

  “They’re hardly obscure words,” Adare replied.

  “Not if you spent your life pampered and petted in a palace.”

  Nira’s accent and idiom seemed to shift as she spoke. In general the woman’s speech was crude, crass, piled high with colorful expletives, but some times, as now, she slipped into a more polished idiom, as though she knew deep down how a woman ought to speak, but couldn’t be bothered most of the time.

  “According to the story, my father is rich. It’s plausible that he educated me.”

  “Oh, it’s plausible, all right, but we ain’t shootin’ for fuckin’ plausible—which, by the way, is another bright, shiny word you ought not let slip past those pouty lips. We’re shootin’ for utterly forgettable. These cretins”—she waved a gnarled hand at the golden-robed faithful before and behind—“are near as thick as you, but they’re not utterly without brains. You want ’em sayin’ to each other, ‘That Dorellin certainly is a bright young woman. She speaks so eloquently, so insightfully.’ ” She raised an eyebrow. “You want that?”

  “The empire is filled with eloquent, insightful young women.”

  Nira snorted. “Is it? Where’d ya learn that? In the years ya spent down by the docks? Maybe it was all the time ya wasted loiterin’ around the Greymarket, talkin’ to other merchants’ daughters.” She furrowed her brow. “Well? How ’bout it? How many merchants’ daughters ya meet sitting on your little princess throne?”

  “Look,” Adare said, seeing the point but refusing to concede it, “I appreciate your trying to help me, but I don’t think it’s working out. I’ll be just fine on my own. I think it’s best if we keep to ourselves, keep our own counsel from here on. People are more likely to notice us talking than they are to remark on a young woman walking quietly by herself.”

  “More idiocy,” Nira snapped. “You got enough stupid to fill up a bucket.”

  Anger abruptly boiling over, Adare turned on the woman, stepping directly into her path, forcing her to stop. She stood more than a head higher, and she used every inch of her height, leaning in close, the words tangling in her throat before spilling out.

  “I am an Annurian princess,” she hissed. “I am a Malkeenian, and, until I fled the palace, I served as the Minister of Finance. I have no idea who you are, or how you decided that I was your responsibility, but, while I appreciate your aid, I will not tolerate either your treatment or your tone any longer.”

  She realized, when she finished speaking, that she was panting, the breath hot in her throat. The brief tirade had taken only a moment, and she had kept her voice quiet enough that none of the other pilgrims seemed to have noticed, but the cart following them was rapidly approaching, and Adare turned abruptly, striding ahead, not looking to see if the other woman was following. A band of fear tightened around her chest. It was one thing to resent Nira’s ministrations, quite another to snap at the woman openly, almost publicly. So far, she’d been trying to help, but if she turned on Adare, she could end the whole façade with just a few words.

  Stupid, Adare muttered at herself. Rash and stupid.

  After a few worried paces, she heard the woman approaching, cane tapping on the stone flags. She was wheezing with the effort. No, Adare realized, not wheezing. Nira was laughing at her. Relief welled up, followed closely by a new surge of anger.

  “You’re a stupid slut, all right, but at least ya got some spirit to ya. Now go over it again, or I’ll tell this whole lot who y’are.”

  Adare took a deep breath, quelling her temper, vowing not to let the woman’s gibes get the better of her again. Merchants’ daughters might be proud, but they weren’t as proud as princesses, and Nira’s insults weren’t likely to be the last that Adare faced. She couldn’t afford to explode every time she felt slighted, not if she wanted to survive the pilgrimage. Not if she wanted to reach Olon, Vestan Ameredad, and the disbanded Sons of Flame.

  Adare opened her mouth to rehearse her story once more when Oshi, from his perch atop the wagon, abruptly began to weep. He sobbed with his whole body, skinny frame convulsing, hands still clutching the pear just inches from his face.

  “No,” he moaned. “No, no, no . . .”

  Nira grimaced and turned to the wagon, Adare forgotten. With surprising nimbleness, the old woman climbed onto the loaded bed and seated herself next to her brother.

  “Knock off with that pissin’ and moanin’,” she snapped. “No one wants ta hear a cracked old man sobbin’ over some ’Kent-kissing fruit.”

  The words were hard, but Nira slid a hand in gentle circles over her brother’s back as he wept. Oshi’s tears dampened his robe where they fell. Seen from behind the blindfold, those wet patches on the golden cloth might have been stains rather than tears, or burns in the fabric.

  “It’s dead, Nira,” he sobbed, holding up the pear. “I killed it.”

  “You didn’t kill it, ya old fuck,” she snapped, rooting in the wagon bed as she spoke. “Whoever picked it killed it, and besides, it’s gotta be dead if ya want to eat it, don’t it?”

  Oshi just shook his head helplessly, then pressed his furrowed brow against the pear, as though trying to commune with the fruit. After a little more rummaging about, Nira came up with a rough clay bottle, unstoppered it, moved the pear aside, and held the vessel to her brother’s lips.

  “Here,” she said. “Have some of this. It’ll make ya feel better.”

  Adare caught a whiff of some unfamiliar liquor, both potent and acrid. Even at a distance, it made her eyes water, and yet Oshi slurped at it eagerly, taking the bottle in his own hands and tilting it backward until Nira stopped him.

  “That’s plenty now. Bad enough listening to all your groanin’ without having ya piss all over the wagon.”

  Oshi relinquished the vessel reluctantly, and Nira recorked it, then set it down inside the wagon’s bed out of the sun.

  “Now eat your pear, ya crazy old bastard,” she said, handing back the fruit.

  The man took a small bite, tested the soft white flesh on his tongue, then chewed it slowly.

  “It’s sweet,” he said, as though marveling at the discovery.

  “Of course it’s sweet, ya idiot,” Nira replied, draping an arm across his shoulders. “Of course it’s fuckin’ sweet.”

  Suddenly embarrassed, Adare turned away. There was nothing remarkable about the sight, just an old man and an old woman sitting side by side, one munching through a pear, the other watching him with a blend of fondness and irritation, the whole thing transpiring in the open, beneath the warm gaze of the sun. And yet, for some reason she couldn’t place, Adare felt as though she were spying, witnessing a moment that should have been private. Confused and chagrined, she stopped, looking out over the canal as the wagon jolted on down the road.

  It was impossible to imagine sharing such a scene with Kaden or Valyn. Even as children, before they were sent away, there had been a distance between Adare and her brothers, a gap of years and gender that proved impossible to bridge. The boys’ invented adventures in the Dawn Palace seemed so pointless, so childish, next to the very real politics and maneuvering unfolding all around them.

  “You should stay with your brothers,” Sanlitun told her once, when she demanded to accompany him to yet another imperial audience. “You should try to know them.”

  “There’s nothing to know!” Adare had complained. She was eight years old at the time, which meant Kaden was five and Valyn even younger. “They’re babies. They play like babies and they cry like babies. I want to
go with you, to do something important.”

  “They will not be babies forever, Adare,” Sanlitun replied, putting his arm around her shoulder. “A day will come when they need you, especially Kaden.”

  And yet, despite the admonishment, he had allowed her to accompany him, to sit silent and still on an upholstered cushion to the right of the Unhewn Throne as he went about the business of the empire. And then, one day, her brothers were gone, shipped away to opposite ends of the earth.

  For years she had barely noticed their absence. Her studies consumed her at first. Then, as she grew older, Sanlitun gave her more and more responsibility: the greeting of foreign delegations, year-long apprenticeships in the various ministries, short journeys beyond the city walls, always heavily guarded, to observe the local estates and industries. When she reached her fifteenth year, Sanlitun even had a second desk moved into his study, a smaller version of his own, where she was allowed to work with him late into the night, the two companionably silent as he reviewed the endless ephemera of government and she studied whatever stack of maps or papers he set in front of her.

  She knew it wouldn’t last forever, that one day Kaden would return, that one day her father would die. The knowledge had done nothing to prepare her for the event. Now, with both her parents gone and her only home vanished down the long road behind her, with nothing ahead but fear and uncertainty, she wondered how it might feel to have a brother, two brothers, siblings who understood something of what it meant to grow up in the Dawn Palace, whom she could talk to about her father and mother, whom she could trust. We wouldn’t even need to talk, she thought, stealing a glance at Nira and Oshi, if they were just here.

  She felt her eyes filling, and, forgetting about the cloth for a moment, tried to scrub the unshed tears away with an angry swipe of her sleeve. There was no telling where Kaden and Valyn were, no way to know if they were still alive, and no promise she could rely on them even if they were. Wishing was all well and good, but if her brothers were still alive clearly they were in no position to do anything to help either her or the empire. They were strangers, absent strangers. Despite the hundreds of pilgrims walking the road before her and behind, despite Nira and Oshi sitting on the wagon a few paces distant, she was alone.