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

by Brian Staveley

  “It’s not a matter of conscience,” Balendin said, responding to Valyn, but keeping his eyes warily on Long Fist. “It’s a matter of practicality. While I’ve got secrets, I stay alive.”

  “You may not find living such a blessing,” Long Fist mused, “when the life lived is one of pain. You know something of my people, yes? Have you learned that we can cut out the heart without slicing the veins that feed it? Twice yearly, we hold a march in Kwihna’s honor; the tributes carry their own hearts in their hands. I can offer you pain without death’s escape.” He gestured to Huutsuu with a single finger. “Show him.”

  The woman stepped forward, smiling, the knife she had used to free Valyn still ready in her hand.

  “Begin with his small finger,” the shaman said.

  Balendin backed up a step, but the taabe and ksaabe behind seized him by the shoulders and elbows, holding him in place as Huutsuu took his hand firmly in her fist, then set the blade to the knuckle. Valyn had slaughtered chickens and pigs on the Eyrie—all part of the training in anatomy—and he remembered how easily the tendons parted when he found the gap between the bone. Huutsuu didn’t bother hunting for that gap. It took the Urghul woman a few moments to pry Balendin’s little finger loose from his desperately clenched fist, and then she went to work, hacking through the flesh as the leach cursed and writhed, then sawing away at the bone itself for what seemed like an age before the blade, as if of its own accord, finally sliced through the tendon.

  Balendin slumped against his captors while she held up the finger, inspecting it in the sunlight as though it were some sort of dubious vegetable.

  “I’ll kill you,” he panted. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Huutsuu frowned, then turned to Long Fist.

  “Another finger?”

  The shaman shook his head.

  “Not yet, I think.” He turned to Balendin. “I am quite willing to take your body apart joint by joint. It would be a great sacrifice to Kwihna. If I leave you whole, it will be because there are things you can tell me whole that you cannot tell me in pieces. And so I will ask again, in the hope that this time you will tell me: Who sent you to kill the Emperor?”

  Balendin hesitated, glanced down at the blood spurting from his severed finger, then spat.

  “Ran il Tornja,” he said.

  Valyn stared, uncertain that he’d heard the words correctly. “Il Tornja is the kenarang,” he said finally. “He was appointed by my father. It was the Chief Priest of Intarra, Uinian, who assassinated the Emperor.”

  Balendin shot him a scornful glance. “Il Tornja pinned Sanlitun’s murder on the priest, you fool. Or did you really think a ’Kent-kissing cleric could get past the Aedolian Guard?”

  “The Aedolian Guard isn’t living up to its reputation these days,” Valyn replied, trying to make sense of the leach’s claim. “Or maybe you don’t remember our meeting with Micijah Ut out in the Bone Mountains.”

  “They were in the Bone Mountains because they were the ones il Tornja could trust. He couldn’t send anyone loyal to your brother because they wouldn’t kill your fucking brother. That’s another clue for you, if you needed more clues. Uinian didn’t control the Aedolian Guard. He couldn’t have sent Ut anywhere.”

  “And you,” Valyn said slowly, the magnitude of the betrayal sinking in. “Il Tornja commands the Kettral.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Talal said, frowning. “Why send Yurl and Balendin when he could send Fane or Shaleel? Why not send the Flea?”

  The leach shook his head, as though incredulous that they could be so stupid. His rictus of pain did nothing to hide the scorn. “Because the Flea and Shaleel serve the Emperor. Il Tornja needed new blood, a young Wing, loyal to him and only him.”

  “Loyal,” Valyn spat, “is a sick word to hear on your lips.”

  “You’re the one asking the questions,” Balendin snarled. “You and your newfound Urghul ally.”

  Long Fist raised a finger and they all fell still.

  “Why did your war chief kill your emperor? What does he want?”

  “The usual,” Balendin said, voice tight. “To rule. Rule everything. The Emperor is dead. Everyone thinks the priest murdered him. . . .”

  “And now the priest, too, is dead,” Long Fist concluded.

  Valyn frowned. “The trial is finished?” The last he’d heard, Uinian was still in captivity. Of course, that news was more than a month out of date now.

  Long Fist nodded. “The princess,” he said. “Your sister. She burned him.”

  “No,” Valyn replied, shaking his head. The shaman clearly had a tenuous grasp of imperial justice. “Adare didn’t burn anyone. Even traitors live under the rule of law in Annur. If Uinian was executed, he was convicted by a jury of the Seven.”

  The shaman shrugged. “The priest is dead. Burned alive.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I have watchers in your city.”

  Valyn paused. It was unlike the Urghul to use spies. As far as the Kettral knew, the nomads were too disorganized, too indifferent to strategy and politics to manage much more than the occasional raiding party. Long Fist, however, was unexpected. He had managed to unify the Urghul, which meant he saw further or deeper than his fellow chiefs. Perhaps here, too, he was pressing the boundaries of tradition and custom. In any case, Valyn hadn’t heard a word regarding the situation in Annur, not since quitting the Islands. Even the shaman’s garbled intelligence was better than nothing.

  “Where is Adare now?”

  “Gone,” Long Fist said. “Disappeared.”

  “Starting to see the pattern?” Balendin growled. “You don’t have to take my word for it. Il Tornja killed your father, then your sister. He ordered me to kill you, and he sent Ut and Adiv to take care of Kaden.”

  “If il Tornja’s behind all this,” Valyn asked, trying to work it through, “why hasn’t he claimed the throne for himself yet? Why hasn’t he named himself Emperor?”

  “Because he’s not fucking stupid.” The leach was cradling his maimed hand in his good one, but blood dripped from between his fingers. Valyn could smell it the same way that he could smell the leach’s mounting fear.

  “Emperor,” Long Fist said quietly, exhaling the syllables in a slow wash of smoke. “It is, as you say, a name. A word. Nothing more. On the steppe we do not worship names, but your people are different. Perhaps il Tornja hides behind another word—regent—until his foes forget their opposition. On the steppe”—he made a curt, slashing motion with his hand—“it would not work, but among a soft folk obsessed with words, choosing the right word is nearly as important as doing the right thing.”

  The shaman turned his attention back to Balendin, sucking slowly through the stem of his pipe as he watched the leach, then breathing out a slow cloud of smoke.

  “And what,” he asked finally, “does Ran il Tornja want with my people? Why does he order these attacks against us?”

  “I’m not his ’Kent-kissing confidant,” Balendin hissed, “but it seems pretty obvious.”

  “Make it clear to me.”

  “Legitimacy.”

  Valyn stared at the leach, the pieces falling into place. Sanlitun’s political foes had often termed his policy with the Urghul appeasement. Since il Tornja’s elevation to kenarang, however, Annur had begun to take a harder position, fortifying the northern border, building new forts, even allowing strategic incursions over the White River.

  It was hard to say precisely why il Tornja would want to antagonize the Urghul, but history furnished a few examples. Maybe he was angling for more coin in the coffers of the Ministry of War. Maybe he was looking to expand the upper ranks of the army, to justify the promotion of a few confederates. Or maybe he wanted an open war. Valyn forced himself to consider that last option. It made a certain mad sense, especially if the kenarang aspired to the Unhewn Throne itself. A sufficiently violent conflict would terrify the people of Annur, maybe terrify them enough that they would accept a seaso
ned warrior on the throne and overlook the fact that il Tornja lacked Intarra’s burning eyes.

  Valyn hesitated, Sami Yurl’s final words echoing in his ears. “What about Csestriim?” he asked slowly. “Yurl claimed that the Csestriim were involved.”

  Balendin stared at him, incredulous. “I understand that growing up in a palace could give you an inflated sense of your own importance, but I didn’t realize it went this far.” He shook his head. “Csestriim.”

  Valyn frowned. There was something . . . strange in the leach’s words. Something missing. Before he could put his finger on it, however, Long Fist was putting down his pipe. He looked first at Balendin, then at Valyn.

  “What, precisely, did this person—Yurl—say?” For the first time he looked truly invested, leaning forward slightly, hand on his knee.

  Valyn shook his head. “He said the Csestriim were involved somehow. That they were behind it.”

  “And there were those creatures, too,” Talal added. “The ak’hanath.”

  Balendin shook his head. His face had gone ashen, but he kept his feet. Whatever else was true about him, the leach had spent half his life with the Kettral, and the Kettral trained you to deal with pain. “Yurl was an idiot. He fought well, but he was an idiot. We knew about the ak’hanath. Adiv told us they had something to do with the Csestriim originally, not that the Csestriim were still alive, still involved.”

  He was lying. Valyn knew all at once, without understanding how he knew. Something about the smell of him, an oily scent that was not a scent at all, a sweet intangible reek of the raw nerves that accompanied deceit.

  “Another finger?” Huutsuu asked, looking to the chieftain.

  Long Fist nodded.

  “No,” Balendin protested. “You fucking fools . . .”

  But the Urghul woman was already on him, peeling back the small finger on the other hand, then driving the knife into the joint, twisting and sawing, blood spattering her face as the leach thrashed. When it was all finished, Balendin slumped against the warriors who restrained him.

  Long Fist looked at him for a long time. “The Csestriim?” he asked again.

  “There were no Csestriim,” Balendin spat. “Unless you think il Tornja is Csestriim.”

  Valyn inhaled slowly, but whatever he’d smelled or thought he’d smelled was gone. There was only the ragged, rusted edge of the leach’s fear, fear he held firmly in check.

  The shaman frowned, but did not respond.

  “More?” Huutsuu asked.

  He shook his head. “He has told us what he knows.” After a long pause, Long Fist turned to Valyn.

  “I trusted Sanlitun,” the Urghul leader said quietly. “Although he led a soft people, he understood something of hardness. Now . . .” He held a hand toward Valyn, palm up, as though offering something precious but invisible. “Your father is dead, murdered, and I believe we share a common foe.”

  “Meaning what?” Valyn asked, his legs suddenly unsteady beneath him.

  “Meaning that together we can avoid a war.”

  Despite Long Fist’s words, the sounds of martial readiness shivered the air: the drumming of hooves, shouts of men and women, cold clatter of steel on steel. Just a shield, the shaman claimed, but thousands of mounted warriors were never just a shield. Full-scale war had not come to Annur in generations, and now, according to Long Fist, the decision to halt it lay in Valyn’s hands.

  “And how do we avoid war,” he asked carefully, “when il Tornja, the kenarang and regent both, is bent on it?”

  The shaman smiled, revealing those bright, sharpened canines. “You kill him.”

  24

  The burn was not a burn. Not, at least, like any burn Adare had ever seen. The intricate tracery of red scar looked more like the swirls of henna that brides from Rabi and Aragat inked onto their skin, a thousand ramifying twists and whorls snaking around her arms and torso, down her legs and up her neck like tiny red vines spreading into her hair. Unlike vines, however, unlike ink, the burn was a part of her. When she flexed her arms or fingers, those burns shifted with the flesh, the scar-smooth skin catching the light until it seemed to shine, to glow. The wounds throbbed, but the pain was cold and bright rather than chafing. Still, when Adare tried to get out of bed, she felt her legs turn to water and her mind fade, all thought blotted out in a great wash of light.

  It was a day before she could cross to the window and another before she could reach the door, but on the third morning, despite the wobble in her gait, the brightness stamped on her sight, she insisted on seeing her Aedolians. Lehav and Nira had assured her over and over that both men had survived the ordeal, but Adare needed to witness it herself, to stand in the same room with them, to touch them and hear them speak.

  The room was dark, blinds drawn over the windows, the single lamp unlit on a bedside table. At first Adare thought they were sleeping, then Birch raised his head weakly from the pillow, and she stifled a gasp. The lightning had burned him, too, but there was nothing delicate or graceful about the bright red weal smeared across half of his once-handsome face. Of the wounded eye, she could see nothing. It was either lost or the lid had burned shut. Any expression must have been excruciating for him, but he raised his brows.

  “Come to finish us off, my lady?” He tried a grin, but his voice was thin as smoke.

  Adare shook her head. “I wanted . . . I came to see that you were all right.”

  “We’re fine,” Fulton cut in, although when he pushed himself up in his cot he looked anything but fine. The lightning had spared his face, but a rogue branch of the bolt had torn down his chest like a talon, ripping the skin apart. The bandages over the wound were heavy with seeping blood and pus, and he was even thinner than before the botched execution.

  “Are they feeding you?” she demanded.

  Fulton nodded. “Broth, at the moment. Neither of us can hold down much more.”

  He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “Your face, your neck. You are well?”

  “Well enough,” she said, nodding.

  “Thanks be to Intarra,” the man murmured.

  “For what?” Birch asked. “Grilling us like fish on a skewer?”

  “For sparing the princess,” the older man replied.

  “I thought it was prophet now,” Birch said. “Didn’t I hear something about a prophet?”

  Adare nodded weakly. “That’s what some of the people are saying.”

  “And what about us?” he asked, gesturing to his face. “Are we prophets, too?”

  “We are soldiers,” Fulton ground out, warning heavy in his tone. “The same as we have always been.”

  “The same?” Birch demanded. “I don’t think so.”

  For a moment the two men seemed to forget that she was there, glares locked like the horns of rutting bulls. Adare could only watch, her legs too weak to carry her forward, her mouth too dry to speak. At last Birch turned his head away, shoved the blinds aside, and stared out the window into the rain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally, the words flimsy as wet paper, tearing apart even as she spoke them. “I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s no need to apologize, my lady,” Fulton said. “You did what you had to, and so did we. Everyone’s alive. In another day or two, we’ll be able to resume our duties.”

  Birch kept his eyes on the window, and his voice was so low when he spoke that Adare wasn’t sure she heard him clearly.

  “Speak for yourself, Fulton.”

  “Forgive him, my lady,” Fulton said. “The lightning has—”

  “The lightning woke me up,” Birch snapped, turning back and half rising in his bed to glare at Adare.

  “Mind your tone before the princess, soldier,” Fulton growled.

  “Princess? She’s a prophet now, or didn’t you hear? The thing is, I didn’t sign on to serve a prophet.” His eyes were wide, almost wild, accusatory and pleading both. “I would have taken a blade for you, Adare. A bolt in the belly. I would have run into a burning to
wer to haul you out.”

  “You might still have the chance,” Fulton growled.

  “No,” Birch said, voice suddenly horribly weary. “I will not. I’m done. I always knew I might be killed for you, Adare. I just never figured I’d be killed by you. By a deal you made.” He dropped his head back to the pillow, turned his gaze to the window, and fell silent.

  Jaw tight, Fulton started to pull himself upright in bed, but Adare crossed to him, put a hand on his shoulder. He was feverish, skin aflame, and weak as a child when she pushed him back against the pillow.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured. “Leave him be. I already owe him more than I can repay.”

  Birch didn’t turn his head. From where Adare stood, she could see only the unburned side of his face, the handsome side, the side she recognized. Tears sheeted his cheek, but he refused to look over, didn’t meet her eye. He was alive, saved, either by the grace of Intarra or Adare’s own mad folly, and yet she had lost him all the same.

  He is the first to see through me, Adare told herself, staring at the man, trying to remember his casual laugh, his grin. But he will not be the last. Or the worst.

  “I’m not a prophet,” Adare said, shaking her head, meeting Nira’s glare from across the table. “I’m not, regardless of what they say.”

  “The fuck does that have ta do with anything?” the woman snapped.

  “I won’t drape myself in a lie and call it glory.”

  “Oh for ’Shael’s sweet sake, girl, you think you can rule an empire without lying? You think your father didn’t lie? Or his father? Or any of your goldy-eyed great-great-founders of Annur? It’s built into the job. Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.”

  Adare ground her teeth and looked away. They sat just inside the wide glass doors of the old palace where Lehav had made his headquarters. To the south, the lake stretched away farther than she could see, all waves and gray, like a great chipped slate. On the far side of the water, well out of sight, sat Sia, a twin city to Olon, but richer, and more beautiful. Past Sia lay the trellised vineyards of central Eridroa, then the jade hills, green as emeralds, if the paintings were to be believed, sparkling with ten thousand terraces. Adare had seen the vibrant scrolls hung in the Dawn Palace, but she had never been farther from Annur than Olon, and the sudden mad urge seized her to set out south on a lake boat, to slip out of the city when no one was watching and just disappear.