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

by Brian Staveley

  “Don’t talk to me,” Valyn said, trying to still the sudden trembling in his hands, “about watching people die.” Memories of the night before filled his mind, of Laith fighting on the bridge, of the flier falling, spears buried in his flesh. “While you’ve been primping and playing emperor, I’ve been fighting my way across this whole fucking continent—”

  “You were sent here,” Adare protested, “by Long Fist. By the bastard who just attacked the empire.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Valyn said. “I’m here. And I’m going to kill your pet general.”

  “In fact,” Il Tornja said, “you may decide that it does matter. When you know the truth.”

  “What truth?” Valyn snarled.

  More than anything, he wanted to be finished talking, but talking gave him time to probe, to test, to study the kenarang’s responses. Il Tornja was a swordsman as well as a general, that much was already clear. If Valyn was going to kill him, to be sure of killing him, he needed to know more. Somewhere behind him, Adare was still sobbing, still trying to stanch the hole in Fulton’s flesh. Valyn blocked out her cries.

  “You left the truth behind long ago,” he said, moving as he spoke, studying il Tornja’s response. “Left it when you killed my father.”

  “This is bigger than your father,” the general said.

  “Save your breath. Adare already fed me this line. We need you to defeat the Urghul, to defeat Long Fist . . .”

  “And have you paused to wonder,” il Tornja asked, “just where your friend Long Fist has been during this whole bloody battle?”

  “Elsewhere,” Valyn spat. “Who cares?”

  “You might, if you hope to save Annur.”

  “We saved it already. Right here. The Urghul are broken.”

  Il Tornja smiled, a careless, easy expression. If he was nervous to be facing one of the Kettral, he didn’t show it. “It might be more accurate to say that I saved it. Put up your blade for a moment and I’ll tell you why. I’ll explain where Long Fist is.”

  Valyn tested a low feint. Il Tornja stepped aside easily.

  “He is in the Waist,” the general said.

  “That’s impossible,” Valyn said. “Unless he has a bird, he couldn’t have made it out of the northern atrepies.”

  “He has something better than a bird,” il Tornja replied slowly. “He has the kenta. I take it you’ve heard of the Csestriim gates? From your brother perhaps?”

  Valyn tried not to stare, tried to keep his mind loose, ready. When the attack came, it would come fast.

  “What I learned from my brother is that only the Shin can use the gates. I don’t know much about Long Fist, but he’s obviously not a monk.”

  “No,” il Tornja said. “He is a god.”

  “Horseshit,” Valyn spat, lunging forward, committing to the attack this time.

  Il Tornja knocked it away.

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “A god?” Adare asked, voice high and tight.

  “Meshkent, to be precise.” The kenarang raised his brows as he watched Valyn.

  “Sweet Intarra’s light,” Adare breathed.

  Valyn shook his head, fury at his sister’s stupidity flaring up inside him. “He’s lying, Adare. Meshkent . . .” For a moment words failed him. “What the fuck would Meshkent be doing here, taking part in some border dispute?”

  “He hates you,” il Tornja said simply. “Your empire. Our empire. Before Annur, there were a hundred tribes, a thousand spread across Vash and Eridroa making daily offerings of violence and pain to their bloody god. Your ancestors banished the practice.”

  “No,” Valyn said, clenching his teeth. “No. I’m through with this, with hearing your excuses. You killed my father.”

  Il Tornja nodded, but raised a conciliatory hand. “Let me explain.”

  “Explain?” Valyn spat, almost choking on the word. “Explain? So you can poison my mind the way you did my sister’s? So you can turn me into your fawning little puppy? So you can explain to me how my father needed to die for the greater good of Annur? So you can tell me tales about some ’Kent-kissing god you claim to be fighting? Fuck you, and fuck your explanation!”

  He struck just before the last word, lashing out with both blades in a double vane. It was just another test, another probe, but il Tornja turned it aside easily.

  “You can’t win, Valyn.”

  Valyn laughed at that, a sick, dead sound, even in his own ears. “Really?” He jerked his head behind him, where Adare still crouched over the corpse of the Aedolian. “That poor shit was one of your best. He was in full armor, and I killed him with a belt knife. You know how to handle your blade, but I’m Kettral.”

  “Valyn,” Adare pleaded. “We need him. You don’t know everything. I didn’t tell you everything!”

  “You can tell me when he’s dead.”

  He struck again, open fan sliding into horns twisting through the milling stone, one form becoming the next, his body more certain than his mind. Again, il Tornja blocked the attack, his one blade matching Valyn’s two, and again Valyn stepped back. The man was better than good, in truth, as good as the best bladesmen back on the Islands. Valyn hadn’t expected that, but it hardly mattered. He felt strong, ready, his slarn-tainted blood hot in his veins.

  “I’ll find an opening,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

  “You can’t, Valyn,” Adare insisted, just at his ear now.

  “Watch me,” he said grimly.

  Il Tornja’s eyes darted to the left, to Adare, but before Valyn could turn, the knife plunged into his side, hot and freezing all at the same time, stealing the words.

  For a moment he just stared, unable to make sense of the feeling. How . . . he thought, staring at il Tornja, trying not to lose his hold of his own blades, trying to keep his feet as his whole body began to crumple.

  Adare, he realized as she wrenched herself away sobbing, taking what felt like half of his guts with her.

  “You can’t kill him, Valyn,” she screamed. “I need him.”

  She went on shouting, Valyn’s own belt knife still clutched in her hand, her knuckles white where they weren’t sticky with his blood. She was screaming and screaming, something about murder and loyalty and the empire, her face twisted with grief and fury both.

  Doesn’t make sense. The thought drifted through his mind. I wanted to save her.

  Before he could follow the idea, it broke apart like cloud on a windy day.

  Shock. He was going into shock.

  He tried to focus on the pain, to understand it. It gave him something to concentrate on, which helped to keep him from drifting into unconsciousness. Below the lung, a part of him thought. Below the lung, or I’d be gurgling at each breath. He dropped a sword and pressed the fingers of his free hand into the wound, almost fainting as pain lanced his side. She got past the muscle, though. Probably in the liver. Soldiers sometimes survived stab wounds to the liver. Not often. Legs like water beneath him, he staggered back almost to the lip of the tower.

  “It’s over, Valyn,” il Tornja said, shaking his head. “Drop the other sword, and we’ll patch you up.”

  Valyn shook his head weakly, clutching desperately to his remaining blade.

  “No,” he murmured. “It’s not over.”

  “You can’t fight, Valyn,” Adare said, stretching out a bloody hand toward him, her eyes red, cheeks wet with tears. “Just put down the sword.”

  “You can’t win,” il Tornja said.

  “I don’t have to,” Valyn replied.

  The kenarang hesitated, then shook his head. “Meaning what?”

  “Kaden,” Valyn breathed.

  Il Tornja nodded slowly. “Where is he? Is he determined to see me dead, the way you are?”

  Valyn shook his head weakly, a smile stretching his lips. “Kaden is nothing like me,” he said. “He isn’t angry. He isn’t rash. He is level as the sea before a storm.” His legs trembled beneath him. “Kaden will not trust anyone. He will not m
ake mistakes. He will wait as long as it takes and then, someday, when you are tired or relaxed, when you forget to bolt the door, when you’re out riding, or signing papers, he will come for you. He’s not like me. He will not fail.”

  The kenarang’s lips tightened.

  “Valyn,” Adare said. “You don’t understand. It’s not too late.” She took a step forward.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  He had one more play left, one final thrust before he collapsed. With a roar, he hurled himself forward, hacking up and across. It was a desperate attack, and il Tornja treated it that way, knocking Valyn’s blade aside, then flicking out with his own sword, a casual, almost contemptuous motion. Valyn jerked his head back, but too late, too late.

  The blackness came before the burn, a darkness as absolute as anything in the pit of Hull’s Hole. Then the fire, a searing line slashed across his face. His eyes, he realized dimly. The kenarang had slashed his eyes, blinding him.

  Valyn stumbled, half fell, then pushed ahead with what meager strength remained, a single step into the darkness, then another, on and on until there was no more stone beneath his feet, until he was dropping helplessly, hopelessly toward the cold, dark water slapping at the rocks below.

  49

  The cloying air inside the Shin chapterhouse reeked of blood and death. It reminded Kaden of the slaughter of goats back in the Bone Mountains, only the slaughter of goats happened outside, in the clean air beneath the bright gaze of the sun. The small rooms of the chapterhouse admitted little light, and less air. In the struggle, someone had kicked a large pot of beans into the hearth, and the sludgy mix of wood, ash, and broth still smoked, filling the rooms until it was difficult to see, to breathe.

  Bodies lay everywhere, dozens of them, twisted in broken postures, or seated against the stone walls as though sleeping. Some had been nearly hacked apart, flesh rent in wide, ragged wounds, some had been killed by tiny holes no larger around than Kaden’s thumb.

  “Adiv’s men,” he observed, frowning at the bodies. “Six or seven of them for every one of the others.”

  Kiel nodded. “The Ishien know their work, and they had prepared the ground for an ambush.”

  Triste stared about her, hand clasped over her nose and mouth to keep out the smell or to stop herself from retching. Since learning of her mother’s betrayal, she hadn’t said two words together. Kaden had wanted her to remain behind, to go with Gabril, but when he said that he intended to look for Adiv’s body in the wreckage, she had insisted on coming, face hard as stone.

  “He’s my father,” she’d said, “and if he’s dead I want to see it with my own eyes.”

  The chances were slim. Kaden hadn’t seen a quarter of the faces of the imperial soldiers, but it seemed unlikely that Adiv had involved himself in the attack. In fact, Kaden had insisted on waiting until dusk in case the councillor were secreted somewhere else in the square, watching the smoldering chapterhouse from his own hidden vantage. Certainly, as they explored the rooms, he saw no sign of Adiv. No sign, either, of Ekhard Matol.

  The absence of both men worried Kaden, and as they pressed deeper into the chapterhouse, he felt the muscles of his chest grow tighter.

  “Matol is a shrewd, dangerous fighter,” Kiel said, as though hearing his thoughts. “It’s possible he escaped.”

  “If Matol is still alive,” Kaden replied, “then this whole thing failed.”

  “It brought the nobles over to your side,” the Csestriim pointed out.

  “That was only one part of the plan. I had hoped that Adiv and the Ishien would destroy each other. If they have not, if Matol is still alive, I have a problem. They will make a bid for control of the kenta, denying me the gates.”

  “It’s possible he used the kenta here to escape,” Kiel said. “It is part of the imperial rather than the Ishien network, but he knows of it.”

  Kaden nodded grimly. He’d already considered the possibility that the Ishien might escape through the gate—it was a flaw with the plan—but he’d hoped that their desire to capture him combined with the shock of Adiv’s arrival would have stunned them long enough to break off any possibility of an orderly retreat. He had hoped that Matol himself would have been leading the ambush. More evidence of an old Shin truth: Hope is a straight road to suffering.

  “Where is the kenta?” he asked.

  Kiel crooked a finger at the floor. “Down.”

  Kaden hesitated. “Someone could be waiting there. They could have doubled back.”

  Triste, however, shoved past him. “I’m going,” she said. “I need to see.” And before he could reach her, she was running down the stairs.

  They’d barely reached the basement when the attackers hit them. Kaden had tried to study each hollow as they passed, holding his lantern high, listening for the scuff of boot on stone. He’d heard nothing, seen nothing, and then a bright shattering pain erupted across the back of his head and he was falling forward, head striking against the stone wall, then the stone floor.

  Blood flooded his mouth. He realized vaguely that he’d bitten into his tongue, but there was no time to worry about that. As his mind swayed, thought coalescing then scattering like a school of skittish fish, the fighting continued around him. Triste was screaming, and then suddenly silent. Kaden tried to rise to his feet, but something slammed him back down. A weight settled across the small of his back, grinding him into the floor. He opened his eyes to see Kiel struggling with an armed figure, and then, quick as thought, the Csestriim, too, was down.

  It happened too fast for Kaden to have any idea what was going on, but there was no mistaking Ekhard Matol’s face when the man crouched down beside him, his skin spattered with blood, eyes wide.

  “You remember some of the things we did to your little whore here?” he asked, voice soft but savage. “The fire? The slivers of glass?”

  Kaden kept his mouth shut, focused all his effort on shoving aside the red welter of pain, on seeing the dimensions of the trap that they had sprung. There were four figures in addition to Matol, one driving a boot into his back, the other leaning over Kiel a few steps away. Matol himself was holding the Csestriim naczal in his hands.

  “Tan’s spear,” Kaden managed.

  The Ishien shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  “You can ask him yourself when we’re back in the Heart.” The man chuckled. “ ’Course, he might have trouble answering you.”

  “Matol,” one of the other men cut in, “we need to move.” It had taken them only a few moments to bind Kiel’s hands behind his back. The Csestriim swayed slightly, but he was doing better than Triste, who lay slumped in a heap where the wall met the floor. Matol scowled, then nodded. “Get the girl,” he said, gesturing with the spear. “We’ll be secure once we’re through the kenta.”

  A moment later, Kaden felt himself hauled upward by the back of his shirt. The Ishien had made no effort to tie his hands—another measure of the contempt they felt for him—but a short knife appeared at his throat.

  “Walk,” Matol hissed.

  Kaden walked.

  They followed the corridor for a few dozen paces, turned into a smaller passageway, then descended another stairwell. When they reached a small room, stone walls rough cut and dripping, Matol pulled him up short.

  “The kenta is just ahead. You might want to prepare yourself.”

  Kaden stared. The shock of the attack had so disordered his mind that any thought of reaching for the vaniate had been jarred free. Without the warning, he would have stepped through the gate and into his own obliteration.

  “I don’t know if I can,” he said quietly.

  At his side, Matol just snorted, then pressed the knife deep enough into his skin to draw blood.

  “Ah, the vaniate,” he mused. “The Shin methods are so much more . . . humane than ours, but they do have their limitations. You have to court the emptiness, woo it.” He pursed his lips, shook his head in dis
gust. “Our way has fallen out of favor with the monks, but,” he shrugged, “you can’t argue with the result.”

  A few paces off, the kenta loomed out of the darkness, the slender arch of stone tossing back the lamplight at strange angles. The man hauling Triste—Kaden didn’t recognize him—carried her through over his shoulder without a moment of hesitation. Kiel was shoved through a few heartbeats after. Kaden scrambled to find the wide empty space of the trance, reached for the bird that had guided him through before. As though frightened off by the chaos in his mind, the bird refused to alight. He called it, and it fled. He strained for the vaniate, and he failed.

  Matol watched him with a hungry smile.

  “Having a little bit of difficulty letting go? The calm not coming as easily as you’d hoped?”

  As he spoke, he pressed the tip of the knife deeper. Kaden could feel his own blood trickling over the clavicle and down his chest.

  “Don’t let the pain distract you,” Matol chuckled. “It would be a shame to lose your focus now.”

  The pain. Kaden dove into the sensation, leaning into the knife, pressing it farther into his neck until the bright ache lanced down his collar and shoulder, up into his jaw. Matol was shoving him toward the kenta, but Kaden closed his eyes, concentrating on that pain, watching it spread like a growing plant, green tendrils driving into the cracks of his mind, breaking apart the edifice of thought. Matol was saying something, but Kaden ignored it, letting the bright green pain lace through him until there was no emotion left, nothing but the wide blank of the vaniate.

  Now, he realized. It has to be now, right on the other side.

  He opened his eyes in time to see the kenta looming before him, then stepped through.

  The Ishien were waiting on the other side, just a pace from the gate, but they were watching Kiel and Triste. Kaden gave them no time to respond.

  He hurled himself forward, launching himself squarely into the nearest man’s chest. He had just a heartbeat to hear Triste shouting, Matol cursing, both sounds devoid of meaning inside the emptiness of the vaniate, both voices almost lost in the gulls screaming overhead, the waves crashing against the cliffs below. He had half a heartbeat to feel the sun, hot as a slap to the skin, a quarter heartbeat in which his foe tried to shove him off while Kaden wrapped his arms tight and drove forward with his legs, pushing, pushing, until they were both falling through the next kenta, the one that Kiel had warned him led into the Dawn Palace.