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

by Brian Staveley

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” he said, setting three filled glasses on a wooden table. “May I ask which of the leina you seek?”

  “Louette Morjeta,” Triste replied.

  Her voice trembled, and Kaden glanced over to see her biting her lip.

  “So,” he said, when the man in white had gone, “this is your home.”

  He tried to put a name to the feeling that had been tugging at him since they entered the temple, to trace the various strands of emotion, to follow the weave. There was nervousness, and doubt, despair and hope twisted together, even a thin thread of anger. He watched the feeling snare his body in its net, listening as his pulse quickened and sweat beaded his palms. What is this? Not resentment. Not fear. He considered the silk hangings, the sweat beaded on the blown crystal filled with wine and crushed mint. He watched himself watching the things of the temple, studied his responses.

  Embarrassment, he realized finally. It was an unfamiliar emotion, one he’d not experienced with the Shin for many years. It was surprising to encounter it here, now. After all, he’d grown up in the opulence of the Dawn Palace, surrounded by servants and slaves, grown accustomed early to the genuflections of even the highest ministers. It was, he supposed, a testament to the thoroughness of the monks, to their ability to scrub away all such habits, that he felt so out of place now, among the luxury of the temple. The priestesses and priests, even their servants seemed like queens and kings, all poise and perfection, while he felt acutely the dirt beneath his nails, the oiliness of the beaten wool tunic, the rough stubble hazing his chin.

  “You didn’t tell me your home was so beautiful,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

  She frowned, glanced around as though really seeing the place for the first time, then shrugged. “Your monastery was beautiful.”

  Kaden compared the rough stone buildings of his memory with the sweeping curves and sumptuous fabrics surrounding them. “A different kind of beauty.”

  “A clean beauty,” Triste said. She lowered her voice. “This place . . . it’s all wine and silk on the surface, but beneath . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Even in the Temple of Ciena, there are things that are not pretty. And people.”

  Before she could say more, however, the screen to the pavilion swung open and a woman surged inside. Kaden had expected the poised reserve he’d seen from everyone else associated with the temple, but she utterly ignored him and Kiel, throwing her arms around Triste in a desperate embrace, sobbing her name over and over. After a long time, she pulled back, staring in horror at her daughter’s wounds.

  “Who did this to you?” she demanded.

  Triste opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, shaking her head. Morjeta studied her for a few heartbeats, then gathered her daughter in her own arms once again. Kaden couldn’t see Triste’s face, buried as it was in her mother’s shoulder, but her hands closed convulsively around the fabric of the older woman’s gown, and, from the shuddering of her shoulders, it seemed that she, too, was crying.

  After a moment he turned away, uncomfortable and unsure where to put his eyes. For eight years the only people to lay their hands on him had been his umials, and then only to administer penance. He tried to imagine how it might feel to be wrapped up in an embrace like that. Imagination failed him. He had envisioned his own homecoming hundreds of times over, especially during the early years with the monks, but neither of his parents, if he remembered them correctly, would have wept, and now both were dead. There was no one in Annur who would throw their arms around him. No one anywhere. Kaden tried to make sense of the subtle tug of feelings the thought aroused in him, but Morjeta, finally, was turning away from Triste, rubbing the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and greeting them.

  “A thousand apologies, sirs,” she said. “My daughter has returned after a long absence.” She cocked her head to the side, curiosity shouldering aside the initial welter of emotion, then glanced back at Triste. She shared her daughter’s sleek black hair and delicate features, although Morjeta was taller by several inches, and when she wrapped a protective arm around Triste’s shoulders once more, she made her daughter look younger than her years. “How have you returned? Who are these gentlemen?”

  Triste shook her head furtively, gesturing to the wooden screens around them.

  Morjeta’s lips tightened, but she nodded, a tiny inclination of the head.

  “Once again, you must forgive me. Please, follow me. Once you’ve bathed and dined, it would be my honor to entertain you in more privacy.”

  29

  Three days’ hard ride south of the Urghul camp they hit the White River. Valyn reined in his horse as they topped the rise, gazing down into the shallow, winding valley below. Back at the base of the Bone Mountains the White was shallow enough in some places to swim a horse across, frothing over the jumbled boulders in a spray of foam that gave the river its name. Here, however, a thousand miles to the west, it ran deep and dark, a sinuous snake a quarter-mile wide, draining all the vast pasturage of the steppe.

  “Careful,” Valyn said, backing his horse down the northern side of the hill.

  The chances of being spotted by an Annurian patrol were thin. The river still lay a few miles off, and along this section the border forts were spread at least twenty miles apart. Still, there was no point perching atop the hill, offering a stark silhouette to whoever might be riding in the valley below. The evening sun already smudged the western sky, and in another hour they’d be able to ride the final miles safely.

  Laith sighed audibly. “We’re swimming, aren’t we? At night.”

  “We are,” Valyn replied absently, scanning the far bank for rising smoke or some other sign of one of the forts. After years flying on the back of a kettral, it was frustrating to be tethered to the horizon. Five minutes in the air, and he’d know everything he needed to know, but he didn’t have five minutes in the air. He spared a thought for Suant’ra, hoping that she had returned to the Eyrie somehow. That would be the best thing for her, and it would play into his own plans as well. A bird returning empty usually meant the Wing was dead, and if people thought he was dead, maybe they’d stop hunting him for a while, long enough, at least, for him to get close to il Tornja and find out what was going on. To kill the man if necessary.

  He was still grappling with Balendin’s revelation. He had known, of course, that the plot to destroy his family extended into the highest strata of Annurian society, into the Dawn Palace itself—there was no other way to explain the involvement of both the Mizran Councillor and a large portion of the Aedolian Guard. Still, it felt different to have a name. The name. If Balendin was to be believed, il Tornja had devised the entire plot. He had pulled Yurl’s strings and Balendin’s, Ut’s and Adiv’s. Every death could be laid at his feet.

  Something dark and bestial coiled around Valyn’s heart, squeezing, squeezing, until the air burned in his lungs. His knuckles ached, and he realized he was clutching his belt knife, that he’d drawn the blade halfway from its sheath as though the kenarang stood before him. He stared at the hand. The knuckles were pale, tendons rigid beneath the skin of the wrist.

  “Leave the horses here?” Talal asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  Valyn hesitated, shuddered away the rage, slid the knife back into the sheath before anyone could notice, then nodded. Even the indefatigable Urghul beasts couldn’t swim the massive flow. It would mean running on the far side, but running was nothing new. Once they hit settled territory it wouldn’t be difficult to steal new horses.

  “No bird,” Laith grumbled as they dismounted, then turned their mounts free. “No horses. We might as well be slogging around in the ’Kent-kissing legions.”

  “Makes you feel for the common soldier, doesn’t it?” Talal asked.

  Laith stared at the leach as though he were mad. “Hull can have the common soldier. I joined up with the Kettral to avoid this kind of shit.”

  “Luckily,” Valyn cut in, “you know
how to swim. At least you’re not stuck back in the Urghul camp.”

  “Are you kidding? Gwenna and Annick have their own tent, a kid to bring them food twice a day, and skins and skins of that horse-piss fire liquor they drink up there. We, on the other hand, just lost our horses and are about to dive into a river that originates with glacial snowpack. I’ll take the Urghul side of the equation any day.”

  The water was cold, far colder than the sea around the Islands, cold enough that Valyn insisted the three of them run the bank until they were sweaty and hot before starting across. All Kettral could swim more or less indefinitely, given the right conditions, but the seeping cold of that black running water would sap the strength from the strongest swimmer in minutes.

  Cadets learned about cold water the hard way. Each year the trainers sent a group up to the Ice Sea where they were dumped in the drink and told to paddle for the shore a half-mile distant. It was a trivial distance, but no one ever made it. Valyn remembered swimming until his lips turned blue, his limbs went to lead, and his mind filled with hazy fog. The trainers were there to fish him out once he started to sink, but he still remembered the sensation, first the shock, then the gradual creeping weight in his chest, then indifference swaddling him like a soft blanket.

  Halfway across the White River he found the same heavy lassitude pressing him gently beneath the surface. Laith’s head and Talal’s were barely visible in the moonlight, dark splotches a few paces from him on either side. The flier’s stroke was visibly weakening, and when Valyn glanced over at Talal he realized that all of them were struggling.

  He rolled onto his side for a moment, lifting his head above the water as he swam.

  “Faster,” he said. His mouth felt stiff and awkward around the word, as though the syllables were cold stones on his tongue, and for a moment he thought neither of the two had heard. When Laith turned his head for his next breath, however, he cursed briefly but eloquently, then picked up the tempo. Talal, too, seemed to get the message. Valyn was hauling the inflated bag with their weapons, and the other two started to draw away from him. Grimly he rolled back onto his stomach and redoubled his effort. He couldn’t maintain the new pace for long, but the choice was stark: swim or die.

  When he finally hit the far shore, Talal and Laith were already out, but they stepped back into the current to drag him the last few steps. Valyn’s legs had gone stiff and stupid with the cold, and as he emerged from the water into the slicing blade of the evening air it was all he could do to stay on his feet. All three of them were naked, clothes tied tight in the inflated bladder along with their weapons. His jaw chattered uncontrollably, and his throat had gone tight, as though the muscles inside it had frozen.

  “Blacks . . .” Laith managed. “Need . . . our blacks . . .”

  Valyn shook his head. The light wool was perfect for retaining heat, but they had already shed their heat during the long swim. They needed a fire, but a fire would take too long, and the light would draw Annurian troops. Besides, the south bank of the White was as barren as the north, all broken ground and no trees. Work would have to warm them.

  “Run,” he said, pointing a trembling arm.

  Talal met his eyes, nodded, then set out south at a jerky trot.

  Laith growled something that might have been a protest or a curse, but when Valyn started, the flier fell in behind, both of them stumbling over the uneven ground beneath the swaying stars.

  They’d been moving for at least an hour before the warmth started to seep back into Valyn’s flesh. With the warmth came feeling, and with the feeling came itching, then pain. His soles were rugged from running the Island trails, but fleeing through the darkness over rough earth on feet like clubs had resulted in several bruises, a nasty gash across the arch of his right foot, and the loss of the toenail on his left large toe.

  “How are we doing?” he asked, slowing to a walk.

  “I hope you don’t take it as insubordination,” Laith replied, “if I tell you exactly where you can stuff that particular question.”

  Talal chuckled quietly. “I wouldn’t want to do it all over again.”

  Valyn smiled. “And here I just realized I forgot our gear on the far bank.”

  “I will drown you,” Laith said.

  “How about our blacks?” Talal asked. “And the swords, too. I’d feel better with some clothes on my body and a blade close to hand.”

  “Why?” Laith asked, shaking his head. “I was just going to club anyone who came close with my cock.” He glanced down. “Unfortunately, after that dip in the river it’s no longer the fearsome, crushing weapon I remember.”

  Valyn tossed the pack down on the grass and sorted through the weapons and clothes. The dry wool felt good on his skin, and the soft leather boots gave some cushion to his battered feet. The run had both dried and warmed him, and he flexed his hands and fingers, working out the last stubborn patches of stiffness, then rolled his shoulders in their sockets. Already the memory of the desperate cold had started to fade.

  “All right,” he said finally. “We travel by night for two days, until we’re well clear of the border. Il Tornja has no idea where we are, no idea that we’re still alive, no idea that we’re coming for him, but he’s sure to sit up and take notice if one of his patrols picks up the remnants of a Kettral Wing wandering around just south of the White.”

  “We still don’t know if the kenarang is responsible for your father’s death,” Talal pointed out. “Balendin might have been lying.”

  Valyn nodded. “He might have been lying, but I doubt it. Balendin was frightened when Long Fist questioned him, almost terrified. You both saw him.” He hesitated, then decided to leave out the fact that he had also smelled the leach’s fear, had tasted it, like a thick, bilious skim over spoiled milk. “Either way, there’s no reason to take chances. We stay out of sight until we have some ’Kent-kissing idea what’s going on.”

  “I liked it better when we had ’Ra,” Laith said, shaking his head. “I hope she made it clear of the steppe. No telling what those Urghul bastards might do with her if they took her down.”

  “I’m sure she’s—” Talal began, but Valyn cut him off with a curt chop of the hand.

  Somewhere behind them, off to the north but hammering closer in a dull tattoo, Valyn could make out the sound of horses.

  Laith cocked an ear, then half spread his hands. “What?”

  “Riders,” Valyn said, “pushing hard.”

  The flier glanced at Talal. “You hear anything?”

  “Just the wind,” Talal replied.

  “They’re coming,” Valyn said, crouching down to set an ear to the earth. He listened a moment more, then nodded. “About a mile off. Riding at a canter.”

  “A canter at night over this ground?” Talal shook his head. “Dangerous.”

  Laith pressed his own ear to the dirt, waited a long time, then stood. “I have no idea how you heard that, but I hear them now. Sounds like they’re on some sort of path. The earth is packed.”

  Talal had cocked his head to one side, twisting the iron bracelet on his wrist absently as he did so. “I think they’re going to pass us to the west. We should be all right.”

  “You using some kind of secret leach trick?” Laith asked.

  “Yes, very secret. Very tricky. It’s called listening.”

  Valyn figured the angles in his head. Four horses pushing south hard in the middle of the night weren’t a routine patrol. Even on a path, they were taking a risk with their horses, which meant urgency. Urgency meant information, and the only information this far north was information about the Urghul. Valyn gritted his teeth.

  He’d intended to stay out of view, to slink into Annur—past the border first, then into the capital itself—and locate il Tornja without anyone the wiser. Maybe he could meet up with Kaden before choosing his course, maybe not, but waiting for Kaden to tell him what was going on hardly made for a complete plan. Sooner or later he was going to need to decide whether or n
ot to actually kill the kenarang, and to do that he’d need to decide whether Long Fist was telling him the truth. The Urghul chief had insisted that his massive camp of horsemen was a purely defensive measure, but tens of thousands of mounted warriors could turn aggressive in the time it took them to mount up. For all Valyn knew, Long Fist was playing him. Either way, this was a chance to get some unfiltered, unblemished, unprepared intelligence. Not only that, but they’d have horses.

  “Modified dead-man ambush,” he decided abruptly, turning toward the hill and breaking into a jog.

  Laith didn’t budge. “What about sneaking past the patrols?”

  “We need the intel and we can use the horses,” Valyn called over his shoulder.

  “And the soldiers?” Talal asked. The leach had fallen in beside him immediately, but when Valyn glanced over he could see the concern written on his face. “They’re Annurians. . . .”

  “I’m aware that they’re Annurians,” Valyn replied, trying to think through the attack. It was hard to say just how far off the horses were, but they only had a few minutes. “We’re not going to kill them.”

  “Captives,” Laith observed as he caught up to them, “are complicated.”

  “We take them,” Valyn replied. “Tie their legs. Drop them five miles off the path. Should take them a few days to wriggle back, by which time we’ll be well south. With any luck, they won’t even know we’re Kettral.”

  “Luck,” Laith said, shaking his head. “I’d like to start needing it less or having it more.”

  As he spoke, they crested a gentle rise, and Valyn paused, scanning the land below. It was almost as bare as the steppe, but there were a few withered pines, a couple patches of twisted alder, limbs silver in the moonlight—enough cover for a dead-man. And there, the only straight line in a landscape of slopes and curves, the hammered earth of the Annurian track, striking south toward the horizon.