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

by Brian Staveley

  Not that a unified front required the kenarang. In fact, facing the Urghul would prove trial enough without worrying that her own general might stab her just before the battle. Whatever il Tornja’s strange game was, she had no intention of letting him see it through. She would meet him in his tavern, try to glean what useful information she could from him, and then see him killed. It would have to be quiet, of course. She couldn’t afford to spread distrust through the very men she might have to send into battle, but armies were filled with sharp steel and soldiers died accidental deaths all the time.

  She kicked her horse into motion.

  “Your Radiance,” Fulton hissed, “I must protest. . . .”

  “Less protesting,” she growled. “More protecting.”

  Lehav rode up beside her, studying her askance.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped.

  He hesitated, then nodded, as though the answer made sense.

  “I need you to stay with the Sons,” Adare said. “In case things go wrong in town. Set up camp, but stay ready. Keep them separate from the legions. I want a full field between the two armies with nothing in it but turnips or radishes or whatever it is they grow up here. I don’t want a battle. I don’t want a fight. I don’t even want an unpleasant look. I don’t intend to have Annurians fighting Annurians because some idiot starts quarreling with another idiot over who is flying what flag. Is that understood?”

  “It is,” Lehav replied.

  Adare chewed the inside of her cheek. “But make sure they keep their weapons close,” she said finally.

  Lehav considered her a moment more, then nodded, wheeling his horse around, back toward the column still halted in the woods.

  “What’s going on here?” Adare demanded, glancing at il Tornja’s messenger, then turning her attention toward the town below. “Why is the army stopped? Are you preparing for a siege?”

  “Stopped to destroy the dam, Your Radiance,” the soldier replied, gesturing toward the wide berm of earth that loomed at the lower end of the lake. A wide, artificial sluice punctured the berm near the center. Water from above emptied through it and past a series of waterwheels, then into the channel beneath. If Adare remembered her geography, Scar Lake was, in fact, just a place where the Black River paused, widening to fill the huge natural basin, before narrowing again and flowing east to join the White. The people of Aats-Kyl had dammed the southern end of the lake to control the flow and make use of it, work that il Tornja’s soldiers were busy destroying with pickax and shovel.

  Adare shook her head. “Why?” She was no hydraulic engineer, but it was clear that a major breech in the dam would endanger a quarter of the town below.

  “Not my place to say, Your Radiance,” the soldier replied. “The kenarang gives the orders, and we carry them out. Not to worry, though. The Urghul are crafty, but no one’s smarter than the general.”

  The claim gave Adare scant comfort.

  “Where are the Urghul?”

  “Not quite certain, Your Radiance.”

  “And il Tornja?”

  “Maybe overseeing the work, Your Radiance,” the soldier replied, gesturing toward the dam again. “After I escort you to your lodging, I have instructions to find him and bring him to you at once.”

  Adare had a dozen more questions, but it was clear that her young escort lacked the relevant answers. Instead of pestering him pointlessly, she focused her attention on the dam. Maybe two hundred men were at work there, just a fraction of the Army of the North, but the most that could effectively maneuver in the limited space. At first glance, she couldn’t make much sense of the rising and falling shovels and picks, but as she watched, she realized there was an order to the labor. One group was carving a network of wide ditches, while another carted the excess dirt into the town, where still another knot of soldiers was at work on a series of dikes that would protect against the worst of the flooding. It was a complicated operation, and, as the dam grew weaker and weaker, a dangerous one. Sooner or later the earthen wall would give, and the whole weight of the lake above would come thundering down.

  Adare’s palms sweated just watching it. Partly she worried for the soldiers. Partly she worried because once again il Tornja was hard at work on a project she didn’t understand, his men tearing apart the only surety between the tiny log town and the weight of the massive lake that waited, heavy and silent, above.

  34

  This is the time,” Triste insisted. “Adare and il Tornja are away, off in the north. It’s just Adiv in the Dawn Palace. You’ve got to strike now, while they’re away with their armies.”

  “Strike,” Kaden said, shaking his head wearily. “I don’t even know what that means. There are only four of us, Triste.”

  Dusk had stained the sky outside the tall windows indigo. He and Triste, Morjeta and Kiel, had suspended their conversation while doe-eyed women in silent slippers lit the dozens of red paper lanterns hanging in Morjeta’s chambers, then again while still more leinas-in-training—graceful young men and women, silent and gorgeous—brought platters artfully arranged with succulent fruit, thin glass flutes brimming with wine. Kaden had stopped after the first glass, wanting his mind clear as he tried to untangle il Tornja’s knot. He might as well have drained the carafe for all the good his thinking did him.

  It was one thing to discover that Ran il Tornja, the general who had murdered Kaden’s own father, was one of the Csestriim. The claim was shocking, but not beyond belief. To learn, however, that il Tornja was not bent simply on the overthrow of the Annurian line, that he had murdered gods in the past and aimed now at the murder of others, that his ultimate purpose was the annihilation of humanity itself—that was a thought almost too large to comprehend. Kaden had tried for a while, and then, overwhelmed by the effort, by the implications, set it aside. For now, it was enough to know that il Tornja and Adare were the enemy, that they were to be defeated. Whatever the unknown details of il Tornja’s plan, he clearly needed control of Annur, which meant Kaden’s goal was to deny him that control. He could effectively consider a problem of that scope, although considering a problem and solving it were two different things.

  Over and over again he had followed the same trails of thought, always arriving back at the same grim starting place: his enemies had the political power, the military might, and the coin, leaving Kaden with two burning eyes and the clothes on his back. It didn’t seem like much, but Triste was convinced he could make use of those eyes.

  “You’re the Emperor,” she insisted. “People can see it if they just look at your face. Everyone can’t be part of the conspiracy.”

  “Tarik Adiv is part of it,” Morjeta said. “You said so yourself. And the kenarang left him in control of the Dawn Palace.”

  “Then you go take it back!” Triste exploded.

  Kaden shook his head. “How? What would I do? Walk up and pound on the Godsgate? Throw back my hood and display my burning eyes?”

  “Yes!” Triste said. “Exactly!”

  “No,” Kaden replied. “Adare and Adiv are not stupid. Il Tornja is not stupid. They have considered this possibility. They have prepared for it. I would be admitted, ushered in with as little fuss as possible, escorted somewhere dark and discreet where men with knives would finish the work that Ut and Adiv began. You heard what Kiel told us: this is more than just a coup against my family. It goes beyond politics. Far beyond.”

  Kiel nodded. “Tan’is has taken a great risk in acting so openly. He would not do so without the possibility of an equal reward.”

  The thought chilled Kaden, and so he did not allow himself to linger on it. Il Tornja might be immortal, implacable, bent on an almost inconceivable level of destruction, but the problem facing Kaden remained a political one, political and military, almost commonplace in its outlines.

  “I can’t go back to the Dawn Palace,” he said. “I won’t.”

  “So . . . what?” Triste demanded. “You’re just
going to give up? You’re going to let her win?”

  “You could collect allies,” Morjeta said quietly. “Assemble a force of your own. In secret.”

  Kaden considered the idea. “Who? What allies?”

  “There are factions,” she replied, “inside the court. Ministers bitter about Adiv’s promotion. Generals vexed at having been passed over . . .”

  Kaden looked over at Kiel.

  “It could work,” the Csestriim said. “Your father was well liked in many quarters. If we could assemble a list of old-guard loyalists . . .”

  Morjeta nodded. “I don’t have all the names—not everyone seeks solace in our temple—but it would be a start.”

  “Yes,” Triste said, leaning in. “You work fast, force Adiv out before your sister and il Tornja return. When they get back to the city, you’re seated on the Unhewn Throne. Killing you then would be open treason!”

  “Yes,” Kaden said, the word heavy on his tongue, “but they already murdered one emperor, a man girded far better to withstand their attacks than I am. I might be able to get past Adiv, but even then, what would I have? The throne and a group of old men who knew my father. Il Tornja controls at least some of the Kettral. I’d probably find poison in my water or a knife in my back just days after entering the palace.

  “There’s more than one problem. First, even if I get the throne, especially if I get the throne, I’m an easy target. Second, Adare and il Tornja are too far ahead. They’ve been consolidating power for years. As kenarang, il Tornja commands the armies. Adare has seized the political reins, and people are calling her a prophet. They control the two pillars on which all Malkeenian rule is grounded.”

  For a long time the four of them fell silent. Triste picked angrily at a scab on her wrist while her mother gazed into her goblet of wine, as though the answers were scrawled on the mint leaf circling the rim. Kiel’s gaze went hard and absent again. Finally the Csestriim turned to Kaden.

  “You still have the kenta,” he pointed out. “You could get to Aragat. The Malkeenian line originated there. Away from the Dawn Palace, you’ll be harder to attack. The old aristocracy, from when the atrepy was a kingdom, may rally behind you, shield you. . . .”

  “The old aristocracy is here,” Morjeta said. “From Aragat and everywhere else. They arrived months ago for the funeral of Sanlitun, and most have remained for the coronation of the new Emperor.”

  “Why?” Kaden asked, shaking his head. There were dozens of pre-imperial lineages scattered through Annur, their power blunted by the rise of his own family. Most kept to their estates, living off inherited wealth, reading chronicles of the days before Annur, when their lands were their own and they owed fealty to no one. It seemed unlikely that they would travel all the way to Annur to pay homage to a murdered emperor or his missing heir. “What do they want?”

  Morjeta spread her hands, even that small motion studied, elegant. “To see the new Emperor with their own eyes, to take the measure of the man,” she paused, “or woman. To see if they can gain an audience that will lead to some petty advantage. Lower taxation. A favorable trading arrangement. Some of them just enjoy being close to the center of power, like beggars who linger at the gates when a rich man holds a feast, hoping for a few scraps.”

  “So I have scores of disgruntled nobles to deal with, even if I seize the throne,” Kaden said, shaking his head.

  “Some of those nobles might back you,” Kiel pointed out. “Of course, that will alienate others.”

  Kaden tried to imagine it, walking the streets of Annur with his hood pulled up, pounding on door after door, showing his eyes to the guards, demanding to be admitted. What would he say? How would he convince anyone to join the cause of a dispossessed Emperor with no coin or army, no experience running a state? Hello, my name is Kaden hui’Malkeenian. Will you help me reclaim my throne from the greatest general in Annurian history? I’d be grateful, but have nothing to offer in return.

  “It’s not enough,” he said finally, shaking his head. “It’s like Adare and il Tornja have been playing their stones for years and I’ve just now sat down at the board.”

  “They don’t control everything,” Kiel said. “They can’t.”

  “They control what matters. The army. The capital. The Ministry of Finance. I could maybe raise a small rebellion with two or three nobles desperate enough to ride my miserable coattails, but it won’t work. My enemies already have me encircled.”

  “Well, you have to do something,” Triste exploded.

  Kaden almost laughed. Do something. The mildest Shin umial would have whipped him for the notion. Eight years they’d tried to grind it out of him, this thought that he could be something, do something, have something. Their mantras still whispered in his ears like the sound of his own breath: Emptiness is freedom. Absence is truth. Eight years of cutting away, of carving out, of clearing, of emptying, and, right at the end, just as he was starting to master the letting go, to see the true power in the nothingness, here he was, needing to claw it all back.

  Himself, first. Then his allies. His throne. His empire.

  He felt as though he’d been climbing all his life, working his way up a punishing and vertiginous trail, only to find, as he neared the summit, that he had chosen the wrong mountain. Worse, if he started back down now, even if he abandoned the truth of the Shin, there was nothing to take its place, no knowledge of politics or military tactics, no network of personal ties, no wealth, no worldly wisdom, nothing. The board was filled with Adare’s white stones and he had nothing to play in response.

  “I won’t take part in their game,” he said quietly. “I can’t.”

  “So . . . what?” Triste demanded, eyes wide with anger and fright. “You just walk away? You just give up?”

  Kaden shook his head, turning to Morjeta. “How many of these nobles come here, to your temple?”

  She spread her hands. “The ones who can. The ones worth knowing.”

  Kaden took a deep breath. “I’m losing the game, which means I have three choices: cede, fight back . . .” He hesitated, wondering if he was seeing the options clearly.

  “Or?” Triste pressed.

  Then, for the first time since arriving in Annur, Kaden smiled. “Or break the board.”

  35

  The sun-splashed clearing was, Gwenna supposed, as good a spot as any to die. The farm on which she’d been raised had backed up to woods like this, a mix of hemlock, pine, and fir, dark green needles shoved aside by the odd birch shouldering its way up through the gloom. Wood-peas chirruped in the high branches, while blackbirds hunted over the mossy ground, heads stabbing down for the bugs and seeds. It was a peaceful spot, but the Flea wasn’t paying much attention to the birds or the trees. After Sigrid and Newt had dragged Pyrre and Annick down to the other end of the small meadow, he turned his dark eyes on Gwenna.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work.” His voice was quiet, almost weary. “I’m going to ask questions. You answer them. If you lie, I’ll kill you. Start fucking around, I’ll kill you. Leave out anything important, I’ll kill you. When we’re done, I’ll talk with my Wing, see what your friends said to them, and if your stories don’t match, I’ll kill you.” He didn’t sound like he wanted to do it, but he didn’t sound like he was bluffing, either.

  “And if they do match?” Gwenna asked.

  “Then maybe we can talk about something other than killing.”

  Gwenna wanted to make some sort of quick, cutting remark, the kind of crack the Kettral were famous for, but she felt anything but quick and cutting. Blood stained her hands, her arms, her face. It had soaked into her blacks, then dried, stiffening the cloth. Her hair was matted with it. Most belonged to the Urghul, but she had a dozen small wounds of her own, and her muscles were watery after fighting halfway through the camp, then clinging to the talon straps for the rest of the night. And then there was the noose around her neck. That didn’t help either.

  The Flea might have rescued them, but it be
came clear as soon as they were in the air that he didn’t trust them. While his own Wing all wore belt harnesses that allowed them to fly hands-free, Gwenna, Annick, and Pyrre were left clinging to the high loops, smacked about by the wind and the bird’s steep, banking turns, one slip away from a long fall followed by a sick crunch. Smart thinking on the Flea’s part—if the rescuees proved less than grateful, well, there wasn’t much they could do, clutching to the straps and trying not to fall. The other Wing still had weapons drawn—not that they really needed them—and as the bird flew west, the Flea’s soldiers stripped Pyrre of her knives, dropped Annick’s bow and Gwenna’s swords into the hungry night, then fitted each of the three women with the one-way noose the Kettral referred to as a kill-collar.

  “Go ahead,” Gwenna said, her voice a pathetic croak. Maybe the Flea was a part of the whole ’Kent-kissing conspiracy and maybe he wasn’t. Either way, she couldn’t see that it mattered all that much what she told him. Wasn’t as though she had any idea what the fuck was going on, and if you didn’t know what was going on, you weren’t likely to give away anything all that vital. “Ask your questions,” she said wearily.

  The questions were repetitive but straightforward. Why did they flee the Islands? How many men died in the mountains? What happened to the monks? On and on and on, while the noose around her neck chafed with each breath, each movement. The Flea didn’t do much talking of his own, and his face didn’t give much away. He frowned at the possible implication of Daveen Shaleel in the plot, and again when Gwenna told him what she knew about the connection between Balendin and il Tornja. There were dozens of questions that didn’t seem relevant at all—What color was Adiv’s blindfold? What had the Urghul fed them? Gwenna answered those, too. It was a strange sort of relief, after so many weeks of confusion, not to have to figure anything out, to let someone else do the thinking, to tell what she knew without trying to fit the broken pieces together.