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

by Brian Staveley

  Exhaling slowly, he let the image go, watching instead as the oil lamp sputtered for a moment, the flame waving wildly before steadying itself. He understood how the lamp worked: oil and air, fuel and space, something and nothing. Starve it of oil—the flame died. Crowd it—the flame died. Kaden reached out, tested the heat, then settled his hand over the top of the lamp. The fire didn’t quite reach his skin, but it hurt, hurt worse, then began to burn. The quick, desperate animal part of his brain screamed at him to pull back, to cradle it to his chest, but he silenced the beast and kept his hand in place, watching the pain but discarding the fear of pain.

  It felt as though he’d been fighting and running forever, struggling against his foes when he had the strength, fleeing more often. And where had it landed him? Trapped inside a temple, his secrecy fraying, his plans thwarted, enemies circling. He stared at his hand. The skin beneath was seared, blistered, but the fire in the lamp had gone out. He lifted his palm slowly, watching the smoke break apart on the light breeze. The others were exclaiming, but he set the sound aside, following the track of his thought. All this time, he’d been trying to guard himself, his few friends, his family. . . . He turned his hand over, stared at the livid red flesh across the palm. The truth was, he couldn’t protect anyone, not even himself. He’d failed at fighting. Failed at keeping his secrets. Failed at eluding Adiv and the Ishien both.

  “Maybe it’s time to stop fighting,” he murmured, testing the idea aloud.

  “What?” Triste asked.

  He didn’t look up, staring instead at the lines in his scorched flesh, studying them as he considered the various pieces of a new plan, rotating them like stones in his mind until they fit, locking into place.

  He turned to Gabril. “I need to meet the council again.”

  The First Speaker frowned. “So soon? They will still be furious from tonight’s fiasco.”

  “Not right away,” Kaden replied. “Three days. On my ground this time.”

  Kiel raised his eyebrows. “Your ground?”

  “The Shin chapterhouse,” Kaden said. “It’s neutral and discreet.”

  “The Shin chapterhouse,” Kiel observed, “like this temple, will be watched by the Ishien.”

  Kaden paused at that, forced himself to hesitate, to smile. “I know. But there are other ways in. The abbot explained them to me when I spoke with him. Passages underground.”

  “Why risk these passages?” Gabril asked, shaking his head. “Why risk the place at all? I can secure another location easily, also neutral, one not watched by these foes of yours.”

  “The meeting has to take place at the chapterhouse. I have to show the nobles something.”

  Kiel studied him a moment. “The kenta.”

  Kaden nodded.

  “Why?” the Csestriim asked. “The gates have been your family’s secret since the founding of the empire.”

  “It’s the empire we’re trying to replace,” Kaden observed, carried along by the momentum of his own lie. “Triste suggested offering the nobility something they can’t refuse, something in return for their participation in the republic. I intend to offer them the use of the kenta.”

  “The gates would destroy them,” Kiel said, narrowing his eyes.

  “They don’t know that. When they see me disappear, then return the same afternoon carrying fresh fruit from the markets of Olon, they’ll understand the power. They’ll sign whatever we put in front of them for a piece of it.”

  “And when they discover you’ve lied to them?”

  “I’ll tell them it takes months of training to safely use the gates. If we’re all still alive then, we can worry about what comes next.”

  Kiel nodded. “It could work,” he said, then paused, studying Kaden. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

  Kaden smoothed away the barbs of fear, forced himself to meet the Csestriim’s gaze.

  “There is,” he agreed, then turned to Triste.

  “I need you to take a note to the chapterhouse, to a monk named Iaapa.”

  “No!” Morjeta exploded, face aghast. “If it’s watched, they’ll take her! Absolutely not!”

  “They’ll watch her, but they won’t take her,” Kaden said. “Not until she’s led them to me.”

  “They will!” the leina cried, gathering her daughter up in her arms. “You already explained to me what these men are like. They will torture her to find out where you are!”

  Kaden shook his head. “They tried that already, at great length and with little success.”

  Triste shuddered at the memory, and her mother clutched her tighter.

  “Why take the risk?” Kiel asked. “Why not send Gabril? The Ishien don’t know him. They won’t pay any attention to him at all.”

  Kaden hesitated, trying to decide how much to reveal. “I want them to notice,” he said finally.

  The girl disentangled herself from her mother slowly, then turned toward Kaden. “Why?” she asked, voice trembling with the single syllable.

  “They’ll follow you back here,” he said, “but they won’t be able to come inside the walls. At that point, they’ll go back to the chapterhouse. They’ll demand that Iaapa hand over the note that you’d been so conspicuously carrying.”

  “Why would a Shin abbot cooperate with these Ishien?” Gabril asked.

  “Because Triste’s going to ask him to. She’s going to tell him that I asked it.”

  “And what,” Kiel asked slowly, “does this mysterious note say?”

  Kaden shrugged. “That I’m giving up. That I tried to take back my throne and failed. That I’m going back to Ashk’lan with another worshipper of the Blank God to restart the monastery there. That if any of his monks would like to join us, we would welcome them.”

  For several heartbeats no one spoke. Then Gabril started laughing. It was a warm, rich sound, and when Morjeta and Triste turned to him in confusion, he pointed across the table at Kaden.

  “He may know nothing of knives, but his mind is keen as a blade.”

  “You think that when they read this note,” Morjeta said finally, “that these Ishien will try to follow you back to your monastery?”

  “For the chance to capture both Kiel and me?” Kaden asked. “I think they’d follow me all the way to Li.”

  “Only you are not going to Li,” Kiel said. “Or to Ashk’lan.”

  Kaden shook his head, then turned to Triste. “There is a risk for you in delivering the message.”

  Fear filled her wide eyes, but she didn’t hesitate. “I’ll go.”

  “No,” Morjeta protested. “Please.”

  Triste peeled away her mother’s arms. “I’m going.”

  “What about the nobles?” Gabril asked. “They assembled once out of curiosity. They’ll be reluctant to do so again.”

  Kaden nodded. “Explain to them that I plan to make my earlier offer more compelling. Also, make sure they dress discreetly. In fact, tell them to dress as monks.”

  “Monks?” Gabril asked. “Trust does not flow readily between them. As at our last meeting, they will not feel safe without steel in their hands.”

  Kaden nodded. “You’d be surprised what you can hide beneath a monk’s robe. They can bring whatever weapons they want as long as they keep them hidden.” He paused. “Can you write me a list of all the names?”

  Gabril raised his eyebrows. “We’ve been over them already.”

  “I know. I want a chance to study them, to learn them by heart,” Kaden replied. “This meeting is going to be difficult enough. I don’t want to offend anyone by botching a name.”

  Gabril shrugged, then turned to Morjeta. “You have ink and brushes.”

  For a moment the woman seemed not to hear him, staring instead at Kaden as though seeing him for the first time. Then, just as Gabril seemed about to repeat himself, she nodded abruptly and left the room, returning moments later with an elaborate lacquered case, opening it on the table between them.

  “Please,” she said, gestur
ing to the inks and sheets of fine vellum. “Use whatever you need.”

  Gabril took one brush while Kaden selected another.

  “While you’re writing the names,” he said, “I’ll write a short note to each of our . . . friends explaining how to get into the chapterhouse unseen. If I seal them up, can you make sure they are delivered?”

  Gabril nodded without glancing up from his writing. “It is simple enough.”

  “Thank you,” Kaden said.

  As he worked, he was careful to make sure no one in the room could see what he wrote. He thought he had finally discovered whom to trust, but he couldn’t be certain, and it would not do for the wrong eyes to see that his notes to the nobility said nothing about meeting in the chapterhouse, that his letter to Iaapa had nothing to do with a return to Ashk’lan.

  44

  Valyn felt as though he’d been watching Balendin tear people apart for days, the shock of the violence matched only by the shock of seeing the leach free, striding up and down the far bank of the Black, the Urghul genuflecting before him as though he were a nomadic chieftain in his own right. Were it not for his fingers—still wrapped in bloody bandages—and his dark hair, dark skin, Valyn might have mistaken him for one of the horsemen.

  It was impossible to be sure what had happened in the long days since he, Laith, and Talal rode south out of the Urghul camp, but the basic outlines were as clear as they were horrifying. As the flier suspected, Long Fist had double-crossed them. The Urghul chieftain had clearly decided there were better things to do with a Kettral-trained leach than cut him apart one joint at a time. Gwenna and the others, discovering the treachery, had managed to claw their way free, to get clear of the whole camp, to cross the Black, and arrive in Andt-Kyl in time to warn the town.

  As for Balendin, the fact that he had turned on il Tornja, on Annur itself, wasn’t so surprising. Given his well, his reliance on awe and terror for any arcane power, it was little surprise that the leach had thrown his lot in with the Urghul. The casual cruelty of the horsemen, the endless sacrifice and brutality, gave him the perfect opportunity to inflict pain and reap his sick reward from the terror of his captives. Back on the Islands he’d been forced to keep his torture and murder circumspect, forced to choose his time and his victims. Here, he had them lined up by the dozen, by the hundred, all those horrified eyes fixed upon him as he flayed the prisoners, and burned them, and tore them apart. For the Urghul, all that pain was a great sacrifice to Kwihna, but Valyn knew better. The sacrifices Balendin made were to himself.

  “He’s dangerous like this,” Talal said quietly, after the sixth or seventh broken corpse was tossed aside.

  “He’s always been dangerous,” Valyn replied, remembering Amie strung up in the dark garret back on Hook. Remembering Ha Lin. “People have always been wary of him. Even on the Islands: wary, angry, or afraid.”

  Talal shook his head. “That was nothing. This . . .” He sucked air between his teeth. “I have no idea what he can manage with the power. It must be flooding him.”

  “He can have the ’Kent-kissing power,” Laith spat, “as long as it doesn’t help him across the river.”

  And to Valyn’s shocked relief, it did not. Hour after hour the Urghul went about their bloody sport without making anything but a few abortive efforts at crossing: two or three idiotic attempts to swim horses, a bizarre push to build a bridge by tossing a dozen logs into the channel and watching them bump up pointlessly against the old bridge pilings. By the time the sun began to set, the Urghul had made no real offensive at all.

  And then they did.

  An hour was all it took, half an hour, for the logs to build up. Valyn and his Wing could only watch, appalled, realizing along with the townsfolk what the Urghul intended. Somewhere, probably miles to the north, they’d found the timber that the townspeople had been logging all winter long. There would have been huge piles of it stacked at the side of the river, just waiting for the full summer floods to carry it down into Scar Lake. It wouldn’t take more than a few dozen riders to loose it all, thousands upon thousands of logs. With so much weight in the river, there was no need for an engineer. The current built the bridge, forcing the logs up against the remnants of the old pilings and holding them in place.

  In minutes the horsemen had gone from riding idly up and down the far bank to a full-blown charge across the precarious and shifting raft. The foremost riders foundered on the loosely packed logs, the legs of their panicked, screaming mounts plunging into the gaps. The river had turned into a deadly chaos of shifting trunks and thrashing, dying beasts, but the unseated Urghul pressed forward on foot, voices and spears both raised in defiance.

  Valyn’s eyes fixed on one woman with streaming braids and blood smeared over her face like paint. Her horse was gone, but she was darting forward, leaping nimbly from trunk to trunk, watching the logs, judging their movement, choosing her line. In other circumstances he would have admired her poise, her patience—she would have made good Kettral material. Problem was, she’d nearly crossed the channel. A few more well-timed leaps and she’d be into the mud flats on the near side. As though sensing this herself, she paused atop the shifting dam and turned back, waving her fellow warriors on, mouth pried wide with a scream he could see, could almost hear, like a fine file drawn over glass.

  Then an arrow took her through the shoulder, spinning her halfway around, sending her tumbling into a gap between the logs. Valyn watched as the trunks, forced on by the current, closed around her chest. She thrashed desperately, heedless of the arrow wound, trying to claw her way free, but there was no freedom to be had. The river flowed on implacably, crushing her, then folding her under into the dark, invisible current.

  If the dam had remained so precarious, the loggers would have had a shot, but it was clear even in the gathering gloom that both the logs and the water were working with the Urghul. More trunks piled up, stacking closer and closer together, until the horsemen were crossing in groups of three and four, sometimes keeping their saddles until the far bank. Valyn shifted the long lens to Annick. Her right arm was a blur as she aimed and shot, aimed and shot, too fast for Valyn himself to spot the relevant targets. Her face was turned away from him, but he could imagine her blue eyes gone gray as slate in the twilight, the hard set of her jaw. The mud flats gave her and her archers time, but the Urghul had numbers to spare and more. With the dam firming up, even Annick couldn’t hold them forever.

  “Where in ’Shael’s sweet name is Gwenna off to?” Laith muttered.

  Valyn turned to find her darting north between the houses, away from the fight. Didn’t seem like Gwenna to run away.

  “Getting more archers, maybe,” Talal said.

  “What archers?” Valyn asked, shaking his head. “Everyone who can hold a bow is already on that barricade.”

  “We’ve got to go down,” Laith said.

  Valyn shook his head. “And do what? You don’t even have a bow.”

  “I’ve got a pair of swords,” Laith spat. “I’ve got my fucking fists.”

  “Your fists aren’t going to turn that tide,” Valyn growled. “Gwenna has her mission, and we have ours.”

  “They need to fall back,” Talal murmured. “They’ve lost the far channel. They need to fall back to the western island and blow the central bridges.”

  Valyn turned back to the battle. At a glance, it wasn’t obvious that the leach was right. Just a handful of riders had actually reached the barricade, and those were dispatched quickly enough by arrows and axes. As Valyn watched, Pyrre stepped from nowhere onto the highest log of the barrier, swung onto a horse behind the rider like a young woman going for a gallop with her gallant, hugging him close around the chest. Valyn caught a glimpse of steel in the starlight, and the man crumpled forward, then off, tumbling to the ground. Pyrre shrugged into better position on the horse’s back, then kicked the mount north along the far side of the barricade, alone among the mass of Urghul. She charged directly into two more riders, leapt fr
ee as the horses went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and hooves, landed atop the piled logs, then dropped down once more to cut the throats of the struggling Urghul.

  It still looked like the villagers might hold, unless you glanced over to the far bank and saw the army pressing forward, unnumbered, spilling endlessly out of the shadows between the trees. The loggers were tough, but they weren’t trained soldiers. Everyone had a breaking point, and when they broke, it would be a slaughter.

  “Annick will pull them back,” Valyn said, praying that it was true. The sniper had a good mind for tactics, but it wasn’t at all clear she cared whether a few hundred loggers died on Urghul spears. She might have decided on some coldhearted sacrificial gambit known only to herself. “Annick will pull them back.”

  Talal pointed. “There.”

  The villagers were withdrawing. Not a rout, but a purposeful, single-file retreat westward through the village square and over the bridges joining the two islands. Annick stayed. Pyrre stayed. A few dozen hard-looking men and set-jawed women stayed, too, loosing arrows grimly into the massing horsemen, holding them while the others pulled back. The retreat seemed to take days, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before the loggers from the barricade had backed across the middle bridges onto the western island.

  Meanwhile, scores of Urghul had gained the bank of the eastern island, their horses wallowing up through the mud flats or rearing at the barricade. That barricade was high enough to hold off the mounted riders for a few more moments, but it was going to be a close thing for those covering the retreat. A few Urghul had already dismounted to haul haphazardly on the logs. When they’d pried open a gap, the island was lost.