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

by Brian Staveley

  “The ones who made us. Who made us what we were.” She grimaced. “What we are.”

  “Atmani,” Adare breathed quietly.

  For a long time, Nira didn’t respond, not even to nod. She turned from Adare to gaze on her brother’s sleeping face, on his chest, slowly rising and falling.

  “You have trusted me with your secret, girl,” she said finally, not looking up, “and now you have mine. Betray it, and I will tear out your heart.”

  15

  It proved nearly impossible to track the passage of days inside the cold chambers of the Dead Heart. There was no sun or moon. There were no stars to follow in their circuit through the sky, nothing but smoke, and damp, and the constant stench of salted fish. Kaden was given his own small cell in which to sleep, but whenever he opened the door he found a guard outside—sometimes Trant, sometimes another of the Ishien. Each time, he demanded information about Tan or Triste, neither of whom he’d seen since arriving, and each time he was refused. His own impotence in the face of the armed soldiers was galling, but he couldn’t think of any way around it. The Ishien had blades and bows; he did not. The Ishien had military training; he did not. He briefly considered trying to wrest a weapon from one of his guards, but could dream up no scenario in which such defiance ended in anything other than his own death or imprisonment.

  While the guards allowed him to move freely between his cell and the mess hall, the rest of the fortress was off-limits. At first, Kaden tried spending more time at the long tables where the men ate, hoping he might learn something about Triste or the Csestriim. The Ishien, however, proved guarded to the point of paranoia. Some glared at him, clutching to their silence like a shield. Some screamed in his face. Most simply ignored him, moving around him as though he were no more than another wooden chair.

  It was maddening not to know what was going on, either inside the Dead Heart or beyond. For all Kaden knew, Annur had fallen into the grip of some Csestriim tyrant while he wandered the subterranean halls. His frustration, however, was solving nothing, and so he crushed it out, gave up talking to the Ishien altogether, and started spending the majority of his time in his cell instead, cross-legged on the stone floor, practicing the vaniate.

  The trance didn’t seem important, not compared to Triste’s imprisonment, or the uncertainty of Valyn’s fate, or the murder of the Emperor of Annur. But Kaden couldn’t do anything about Triste, or Valyn, or his own dead father. What he could do was practice the vaniate. He could make sure that if the time came when he needed it, he would be ready.

  Despite having entered the trance several times in the Bone Mountains, he still found it surprisingly fickle and elusive. Some days he could fall into the emptiness after only a few breaths; others, the whole exercise proved impossible, like trying to grasp an air bubble under the water. He could see it, but not feel it. Touch it, but not hold on to it. When he closed his mind’s fist around its shimmering absence, it slipped away.

  With nothing else to occupy his hours he set about the task grimly, pausing each day only to eat a little fish, to use the crude latrine carved into the stone a few doors down, to sleep in brief stretches. There was no way to tell time in the sunless, starless dark of the Heart. He pushed himself until sleep claimed him where he sat, slept as long as his body allowed, and then when he woke to sharp stone against his cheek, or a pressure in his bladder, or the unremitting chill of the place, he would rise, blink away the exhaustion, square himself once more in the center of his cell, and close his eyes. It was a grim study, but it gave a shape to his shapeless days, and after a time he found he could slide in and out of the emptiness almost at will.

  At least while motionless. With his eyes closed.

  When he’d mastered that, he set about entering the trance with his eyes open. It was far more difficult, as though the world itself blocked him from the blankness, but he kept doggedly at it, determined to wrest some value from the long, dark days. He was in the middle of just such an effort, staring at the flame of his lone candle, willing away his self, when Tan pulled open the heavy wooden door, stepping into the space before Kaden could register surprise or alarm.

  The older monk took in the scene at a glance, then nodded. “The emptiness comes more easily now.”

  It was not a question, but Kaden nodded, grinding away his confusion, surprise, and irritation at Tan’s unexpected arrival.

  “You should be able to reach it running,” the monk said. “Fighting.”

  “I’m still working on just keeping my eyes open.”

  Tan shook his head. “Not anymore. Not now. Come with me.”

  Kaden stared. “Where are we going? Where have you been?”

  “With the Ishien. Trying to learn something about the girl.”

  “While I’ve been a prisoner.”

  “I warned you that we took a risk in coming here.”

  “We?” Kaden asked. “It looks like you have the run of the place.”

  “Does it?” Tan asked, fixing him with a stare. “Is that what you have decided after observing me so closely?”

  “You’re not locked in a cell.”

  “Neither are you,” Tan said, turning to the door behind them, pulling it firmly shut. When he turned back to Kaden, he lowered his voice. “The Ishien distrust me for leaving, and they distrust me for returning. My position here is almost as tenuous as yours. Any support I offer you will weigh against me in their scales.”

  He fell silent, but the rest was clear: Tan was the only link between Kaden and the outside world. If the Ishien turned on the older monk, really turned on him, they were all finished.

  “All right,” Kaden said slowly, “I understand. How is Triste? What are they doing to her?”

  Tan considered the question, gaze weighing, measuring. “They do not understand what she is.” Another pause. “Neither do I.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What we’ve observed is inconsistent. We need more information.”

  Kaden frowned. “And that’s why you’re here,” he said after a moment. “That’s why you’ve come to me. Why they sent you to me.”

  Tan nodded. “Triste knows you. She appears to trust you. The Ishien believe, as I do, that she might reveal something to you.”

  “Has she said anything about my father? About Annur or the plot against my family?”

  “No. As I said, we need more information.”

  Kaden stared. “The Ishien have kept me penned in here for what . . . weeks? A month? And now they want help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I help them? Why would I conspire with my jailers against Triste, who has done nothing but help me from the first night we met?”

  “You will help,” Tan said, voice blunt as an ax, “because if you do not, you may never leave this cave.”

  Kaden took a deep breath. Two. The monk had only said what Kaden himself had been thinking since the day he stepped through the kenta. And yet, hearing someone else speak the words made them real.

  “The girl is not what you think,” Tan continued, “and even if she were, you cannot afford loyalty. Not here. Not among these men. You help no one, Triste included, if you die in an Ishien cell.”

  Beneath his ribs, Kaden’s heart bucked. He haltered it, soothed the animal part of him that wanted to kick, to bite, to flee, then nodded.

  “Where do we go?”

  “To the cells.”

  The cells. Which meant he’d be leaving this section of the Heart, that he’d be seeing new territory. It wasn’t much, but it was more than he had now. Greater knowledge of the prison’s layout might suggest the location of the exits, and it looked more and more likely that a time might come when he needed one of those exits.

  “All right,” he said quietly, “I’ll go.”

  Tan held up a hand. “There is more.”

  Kaden shook his head. “More?”

  “The Ishien are bringing up another prisoner at the same time. They want to surprise the girl, to overwhel
m her, to shock her into revealing something.”

  “What prisoner?” Kaden asked, confused. “Why would Triste reveal anything to some poor soul the Ishien have locked up in their dungeons?”

  “Because he is Csestriim,” Tan said after a long pause. “And he is dangerous.”

  Kaden stilled his pulse, controlled his face. “They have a Csestriim. Is there anything else I should know?”

  Tan nodded slowly. “The current leader of the Ishien is a man named Matol. Be careful of him. In his own way, he is as dangerous as the prisoner.”

  “The bitch of it is,” Ekhard Matol explained, spitting onto the damp floor to emphasize his irritation, “that the Csestriim don’t respond to torture the way we do.”

  Though Tan claimed that Matol was the commander of the Dead Heart, he wore no uniform or mark of rank, dressing in the standard wool and leather, the garments moth-eaten and battered. He was short and thick, with fists like hammers, a nose like a chisel, and a badly pockmarked face. Physically he looked nothing like Trant—he must have been at least ten years older, for one thing—but the same air of unwholesome dampness clung to him, the same feral intensity burned in his eyes. And, like Trant and Tan, like all the Ishien Kaden had encountered, scars webbed his flesh.

  Tan had led the way wordlessly through winding corridors, past two banded doors, past a trio of guards, then into the cramped antechamber beyond, a small room furnished with a low wooden table and a single chair, in which Matol sat. Kaden hadn’t expected an apology for his earlier treatment, but the man didn’t so much as acknowledge it. Kaden might have been a menial or slave, an insignificant underling who had been called upon to perform a task. That Matol spoke to him at all seemed an indulgence.

  “What have you done to her?” Kaden asked, trying to keep his voice level, the question objective.

  “The usual,” Matol replied with a shrug, gesturing to the door behind him, presumably the entrance to Triste’s cell. “Slivers of glass under the fingernails. Thumbscrews. First-round stuff. We’ve left her alone for quite a while now, to give her a chance to heal up, to get her nice and complacent before we start again.”

  Kaden’s stomach twisted inside him, but he kept his expression even, his face calm.

  “I don’t want her hurt any further,” he said, trying to project something like his father’s imperial authority.

  Matol furrowed his brow, got slowly to his feet, then walked around the small table, pausing when his face was inches from Kaden’s own. He smiled, the expression sharp as a blade, then whispered, “Maybe Rampuri didn’t tell you. Maybe he forgot how we do things in the years he’s been away, so let me fill you in. . . .” He took a deep breath, then screamed, “WE ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING SUBJECTS!”

  Kaden was accustomed to monastic disapproval, to the slow shaking of heads, and even to the brutal penance that often followed. This sudden explosion, however, was something else altogether, and he rocked back on his heels as though he’d been struck.

  “Maybe not,” he replied finally, trying to steady himself. It wouldn’t do to show he could be cowed by a fit of shouting. “But we are on the same side in a very old fight.”

  Matol shrugged, his momentary fury utterly vanished. “Used to be, but the Ishien remembered their charge, held to their post, while you and your family abandoned it long ago.” He paused, as though waiting for Kaden to object, then pressed ahead. “When we’re finished with this bitch, which might take some time, I’ll have questions for you. I want to know about this plot against your family.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Not because I would care if the people of Annur rose up and gutted every living Malkeenian, but because this is how they work, the Csestriim. They find a structure, an order at the heart of our world, something we created, and then they go to work on it, chipping at the walls, undermining the foundation, until it crashes down, until we’re crushed by the very thing we built.” He stared at Kaden, eyes wide and furious. Then, abruptly, he laughed. “Which is why I might need to keep you here for a year or ten. After all, if we’re using you, then they’re not.”

  A chill ran up Kaden’s spine.

  He glanced over at Tan for some sign of tacit support, but the older monk’s face betrayed nothing, and he made no move to speak. Kaden swallowed the insult and the fear both. Pride and fear were illusions—dangerous illusions, in this case. Here, hidden beneath tons of stone and sea, cut away from the cloth of society, a man like Matol could do whatever he wished. Kaden wasn’t going to help Triste or Annur by insisting on his own honor.

  This is why we have courts and laws, he thought to himself. This is why we have an emperor.

  When Kaden first learned of the Ishien, their mandate had sounded like a noble cause, like something pure. That single-minded purpose, however, stripped of the aegis of law and tradition, religion and the order religion brought, began to look very much like madness. For the Ishien, anything was justified if it might lead to the Csestriim. Any lie. Any torture. Any murder.

  “Is there anything new from the girl?” Tan asked.

  Matol snorted. “Same shit. Sobs, begs, whimpers, tells us she hasn’t done anything wrong. Problem is, she doesn’t squirm right.” He turned to Kaden, brows raised as though waiting for the obvious question. When Kaden held his peace, the man blew out an irritated breath and explained.

  “The enemy look human, but they’re not. They’re not right,” he tapped his head with a grimy finger, “in here. When it comes to torture, they feel the pain—Meshkent has his bloody hooks in them, same way he does in the rest of us—but they don’t feel the fear. They’re older than the young gods. Kaveraa can’t touch them.”

  Kaden turned the claim over in his mind, trying to imagine what it might be like to encounter pain without the fear of pain. Like experiencing starvation without hunger.

  “So what’s the point?” he asked finally. “If you think Triste is Csestriim and Csestriim don’t respond to torture, why are you driving shards of glass under her fingernails?”

  Matol grinned. “Well, we weren’t sure she was Csestriim, were we? And I didn’t say they don’t respond. I said they don’t respond right. The old archives point out that you can usually tell a Csestriim spy from the lack of terror.”

  “But Triste’s terrified. You just said that. She begs and pleads.”

  “Sometimes,” Matol acknowledged, then leaned in so close that Kaden could smell the fish on his breath as he hissed, “but she doesn’t beg right.”

  “You still haven’t said what that means.”

  The man paused, staring at some unseen point in the air as he marshaled his memories of pain and pleading. “There’s a certain . . . shape to terror. A kind of writhing of the body, a rhythm to the screams. Everyone responds differently to fear and pain, but beneath the difference there’s something human trying to shove its way out. If you know what to look for, you can recognize that thing, that human thing.”

  Kaden shook his head. “How can you recognize it?”

  Matol smiled, a wide vulpine smile. “Because I’ve been through it.” He raised his hands, and Kaden noticed for the first time that scars marred the ends of his fingers where the nails should have been.

  “The pain,” Kaden said quietly.

  The man nodded. “So someone has bothered to educate you about our ways.”

  “It seems,” Kaden began slowly, “that what you do to yourselves is worse than what the Csestriim might do.”

  Matol stared, teeth bright in the lamplight. “It seems that way, does it? It fucking seems that way?”

  He looked away suddenly, studying the scars as though he’d never seen them before, as though they were something utterly alien and unknowable, then turned his glare back on Kaden.

  “This, all of this, everything we know about pain—we learned it from the Csestriim, from their manuals, their books, from the hundreds of years of meticulous history in which they tortured and killed us. You think this is bad?” He shoved his scarred hands in Kaden’s face.
“You think this is worse than what the Csestriim might do? This is the fucking mild shit. This would have been a relief for our ancestors.”

  Kaden forced himself to look at the scars for three heartbeats, forced himself to keep his face calm, impassive. That the Ishien were sick, broken, was growing clearer and clearer, but he could feel a hard truth in Matol’s words, and unbidden, the memory of the skeletons in Assare filled his mind, the small, clutching hands, the skulls. If the Ishien were broken, it was the Csestriim who had shattered them.

  “Enough talk,” Tan said, gesturing to the door.

  Matol shook his head. “We’re waiting for someone. Someone I want her to see.” He narrowed his lids, looking slyly from Tan to Kaden, then back. “I told Rampuri not to mention it, but I suspect he told you something about our other prisoner.” He stabbed Kaden roughly in the chest with an extended finger. “Didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

  Kaden held his breathing steady. Inhale. Exhale. In and out.

  “What other prisoner?”

  At first glance, the other prisoner appeared neither deadly nor immortal.

  The Shin warned their acolytes about the dangers of expectation, the power of anticipation to distort both sight and memory. Kaden had, accordingly, avoided putting a face to the Csestriim menace. They don’t look like monsters, he reminded himself as he waited for the prisoner to be hauled up from the deeper dungeons. They were able to pass as human. Even the man’s name was unremarkable: Kiel. It might have been the name of a baker, a fisherman.

  He’d been shocked to discover that the Ishien already had a prisoner, one of the immortal beings they had hunted for so long, but once he accepted the notion, he thought he was prepared for anything. When the guards kicked open the door, however, and shoved their charge through, hands bound before him with a stout length of rope, Kaden realized he’d been expecting something after all, something harder, more formidable.

  Kiel was an old man, stooped and hesitant, a faint limp marring his already uncertain gait. Scars puckered his face and hands—a delicate tracery of white lines punctuated by blunt, ugly weals, the result, Kaden surmised queasily, of heated steel. The Csestriim looked dark-skinned, but when he put a hand to his face to scrub the tangled hair from his eyes, Kaden realized that most of the darkness resulted from layers of filth and grime. The man’s apparent age, too, was an illusion—cleaned and healthy he might look only halfway into his fourth decade. Even so, he was a far cry from the formidable monster Kaden had unknowingly expected.