The Providence of Fire (34 page)

“Then we'll fight them,” Gwenna said. “We already fought these, and it was a pretty short fucking fight.”

Annick shook her head, a curt, dismissive motion. “This is a tiny group. Some of the
taamu
number into the hundreds.”

“Then we run,” Gwenna insisted. “We retreat.”

Laith barked an incredulous laugh. “We outride the 'Kent-kissing Urghul on their own steppe on their own horses? How do you expect
that
to go?”

Valyn took a deep breath, then spoke. “This is beside the point.”

“Seems to me it's exactly the point,” Laith said. “What are the risks? How do we minimize them? I seem to remember an entire year spent studying this shit back on the Islands.”

“We talked about minimizing risks in legitimate fights,” Valyn said. “Not about murdering kids who can't hurt us.”

“What is a legitimate fight?” Annick asked.

“A mission,” Valyn said. “Against the enemy. Not just an uncomfortable situation we crashed into the middle of.”

“The Urghul
are
the enemy,” Laith pointed out. “They boil people alive. They cut off your eyelids. The Eyrie has been flying missions over the White for
years
now.”

“Not to kill kids,” Valyn replied. He held up a hand to forestall the flier's objection. “Why did you join the Kettral?”

Laith shook his head. “I don't know. Because they showed up and told me I could fly massive killer birds. Because they're the
Kettral,
for 'Shael's sake.”

“And if the Urghul had birds? Would you fly for the Urghul?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Everything I just got done
telling
you. They're barbarians, Valyn. Do you remember
anything
about their religion, their blood worship? If our fight had gone the other way, they'd be flaying us right now, taking us apart strip by fleshy strip. That's why we have to kill them.”

Valyn shook his head. “That's why we can't.”

Laith stared. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

It was one question too many, and something inside Valyn, some wall that had been holding back both the anger and the words, gave way, crumbling as though before a great wave.
“We are not them, Laith!”
he shouted. “We are not
her
!” he went on, stabbing a finger at Huutsuu, “or
her
!” at Pyrre. “We can kill people, sure. We spent a whole lot of time learning to kill people, and we're
good
at it. But
lots
of people can kill people. Pyrre has been fucking killing people since the day we found her. The thing that makes us Kettral is something else: we kill the
right
people.”

Gwenna was nodding furiously, but Annick brushed aside the tirade with the back of her hand. “Right and wrong. Just a question of which side you're on.”

“No,” Valyn said, rounding on her. “No, it's not. If that's true, then why did we even come here? Why did we leave the Eyrie and rescue Kaden? Why do we give a pickled shit who sits on the Unhewn Throne? If it doesn't matter, we could hire out right now as mercenaries to Anthera or the Manjari. We could make a tidy fortune telling them everything we know about the Kettral!” Despite the chill breeze, he was sweating beneath the heavy bison coat. With an effort, he brought his voice back down, unclenched his fists. “We don't do that because it
does
matter what side you fight on. It does matter who sits the Unhewn Throne. People like Sami Yurl and Balendin—they need to be stopped. They are
bad
. So were the Csestriim. So were the Atmani.” He shook his head, suddenly weary. The shoulder wound ached. Everything ached. “I joined the Kettral so I could defend Annur, and I wanted to defend Annur because it is
better
than the Blood Cities or Anthera, better than the Manjari or the tribes of the Waist.”

“Spare me a lecture on the virtues of our great empire,” Laith said. The words were dismissive, but the fire had gone out of his resistance.

“It's a short lecture,” Valyn said. “We have laws. Laws that keep the most powerful among us from destroying the weak and the unlucky.”

Laith shook his head. “You really did grow up in a palace, didn't you?”

“Am I right?” Valyn asked, ignoring the gibe.

“Annur's great and powerful exploit the weak and poor all the time,” the flier snapped. “I
know,
my family is
both
. Your father raised taxes on blacksmiths—did you know that?” He didn't wait for Valyn to answer. “Of course you didn't. The thing is, the Emperor of Annur didn't bother differentiating between the huge city blacksmiths with dozens of apprentices and small shops with one man and a forge. A little oversight that put my father into debt.” He shook his head in disgust. “My father went to a moneylender. The bastard was happy enough to supply the coin but at a rate no human being could possibly repay. My father worked eight years at it, eight years without a single day of rest, and he died at his fucking forge, more in debt than when he started.”

Valyn stared. In all his years with the Kettral, in all their days of training and nights nursing their wounds, he'd never heard Laith tell the story.

“Look,” he began slowly, uncertain how to respond. “The empire isn't a perfect state…”

The flier raised his brows. “But this was unusual? The exception?” He jerked a finger at Talal. “What about him? The citizens of our good and noble empire hunt down and kill leaches in huge, gleeful mobs. No trial, no law—just a fire or a rope.”

Talal nodded slowly. He hadn't said a word throughout the entire argument, watching silently, arms crossed over his chest. “Annur has flaws,” he said quietly. “Deep flaws. There are liars and murderers to go around.” He glanced over toward the prisoners. “I do not want to be one of them.”

“Well,
fuck,
” Laith said, shaking his head. “Neither do I. I just don't want them coming after us.”

“That's the chance we take for doing the right thing.”

“Fuck,” the flier said again.

“Does that mean you agree?”

Laith blew out a long breath, then nodded reluctantly. Valyn turned to Annick.

“What about you?”

“I told you what I think,” she said. “You're the Wing leader.”

“All right then,” Valyn said. “We take the horses, take most of the food, take an
api
so that we look like real Urghul. I'll retie the knots holding the prisoners, something they can wriggle out of in two or three days. We head north.…”

“I thought we were going west,” Gwenna said. “There's nothing north but steppe, then ice, then icy ocean.”

“We head north,” Valyn said again, “half a day, in case they decide to follow our tracks. We'll tack west when we find a stream to follow.”

He turned on his heel before anyone else could object, leaving his Wing to their preparations. The prisoners were on the other side of the camp, giving Huutsuu plenty of time to stare at Valyn as he approached. Pyrre glanced over when he was close.

“Let me guess, you can't bring yourself to kill them.”

“We're tying them up,” Valyn said tersely. “Heading north.”

The Skullsworn smiled, then patted him on the wounded shoulder. “How did I know?”

“I will find you,” Huutsuu said, as Valyn knelt to check the knots binding her wrists and ankles. “You are a fool not to listen to your people.”

“If I listened to them,” Valyn said, cinching the knot, “you'd be dead.”

“You are soft.”

“You're the one tied up.”

*   *   *

For the better part of two weeks, the Wing made good time, driving westward each day, camping in the low folds between the hills at night. The Urghul horses, though small, were sure-footed and utterly indefatigable. Valyn had wondered how often he would need to rest the creatures, but discovered, to his dismay, that by the time he called a halt each night it was his own aching legs and back that needed respite. Judging from the groaning and stretching of the rest of his Wing, he wasn't the only one.

He'd charted a course just north of the White River, close enough that they could often see the frothing surface; distant enough that they wouldn't run smack into any Urghul watering their horses. There had been some discussion of going south. The fastest route back to Annur would be to ride hard for the Bend, then take a ship for the capital. It was also the most obvious way. If the Eyrie had any hint that Valyn was still alive, they'd have someone watching the docks, watching the walls, watching the whole 'Kent-kissing city. Riding overland to the west was less risky. Less risky, but much, much longer.

The steppe stretched all the way to the horizon, a great green sea with hills like swells. Aside from the occasional limestone outcrop or stand of stunted trees, there were no landmarks, no mountains or forests, just massive emptiness spread beneath the bowl of the sky. Even the streams looked the same—narrow, low-banked, stony brooks draining south into the White River.

Valyn found the open space unnerving. It offered nowhere to hide, nowhere to make a stand. The low hills rose and fell just enough to obscure the surrounding territory without providing any shelter. They could be riding parallel to an Urghul
taamu
for all Valyn could tell, the horsemen just out of sight over the next fold, and his neck grew sore from constantly pivoting, endlessly scanning the green horizon.

After a few days, Talal pointed to the south. Valyn squinted. A line of golden hills flanked them in the far distance, miles and miles beyond the river. Sand, he realized, the huge, undulating dunes of the Seghir Desert. Entire armies had been swallowed up in the Seghir, foreign and Annurian, bones and armor lost beneath the shifting sand. Even north of the river, where his own Wing rode, the soil began to turn dry and cracked, forcing Valyn to alter course, breaking away from the river for greener grass while still pushing west.

Twice they spotted herds of bison in the distance, thousands of shaggy brown beasts three times the size of the horses they rode. Despite the curving horns, the creatures seemed docile enough, lazily cropping the long grass, pausing occasionally to snuffle at the air. When they broke into a run, the whole mass wheeling and charging away into the distance, Valyn could feel the ground quiver beneath his feet while the air trembled with a sound like thunder.

Near the end of the fourth day, they pulled up atop a low hill just in time to see a much larger band of riders—maybe three or four hundred—also headed west, probably half a day's ride ahead of them. Despite the size of the group, they were hammering hard, even harder than Valyn's Wing, the herd of horses kicking up a haze of dust that hovered over the steppe like a storm cloud, dimming the noon sun. Valyn counted three more
taamu
after that, all headed west, moving fast. It was easy enough to stay clear, to avoid the hilltops and rises, but the sight of so many Urghul on the move made him nervous.

“Where do you think the bastards are going?” Gwenna asked.

“No idea,” Valyn replied, shaking his head. “Hopefully not the same place we are.”

The lack of cover during the long, sun-baked days made Valyn sweat, but it was the rain, finally, that did them in.

He had called a halt early. Though daylight lingered, the east wind reeked of storm, Gwenna, for all that she refused to complain, looked ready to fall out of the saddle, and Valyn himself didn't feel far behind. As Hendran wrote,
There is speed in slowness.
Much as Valyn chafed to be back in Annur, to find Kaden, to find whoever was behind his father's murder, and the monks', and Ha Lin's, there were miles of steppe and little to be gained by trying to cross it all in one frenetic push.

The rain started just after dark. It would have been nice to set up the
api
or build a fire, but fires meant light and smoke, and the
api
would do nothing but trap half the Wing and limit its visibility. Better to be cold and ready than warm and dead, and so they wrapped themselves in their bison cloaks, the wet hides chilly and reeking, checked weapons, then sat down to gnaw through strips of dried meat and chunks of hard Urghul cheese before falling asleep.

Valyn took the first watch. The wound in his shoulder was healing, but still stabbed at him whenever he moved wrong. The others had settled into a rough circle, as though around the memory of a campfire. Asleep, wrapped in the huge cloaks, they looked younger than they were, more innocent, almost like children. Even Pyrre, with her graying hair, might have been a fishmonger or a merchant rather than a vicious death-priest with her hands steeped in blood. It seemed like weeks since Valyn had had the space and time to really
think
about his Wing, about what they'd given up when they fled the Eyrie, about what they faced in the weeks ahead. The responsibility clamped down on him like a hard fall frost. Then the rain began in earnest.

The heavy drops soaked his hair in a few heartbeats, chilling his face, seeping down the back of his cloak even as they churned the ground to mud, turned the night air to a black, sheeting murk. Valyn sat up straighter, ignoring the cold settling into his bones, a hand on his belt knife. He didn't realize how accustomed he'd grown to his heightened hearing, but now, with the quiet roar of a million raindrops spattering against the earth, he felt deaf, disoriented, vulnerable.

He rose to his feet, slipping a blade from beneath the cloak, and walked to the top of a small rise. Whatever he might have seen beneath a full moon or stars was scrubbed out utterly by the downpour. There was the rain and the earth at his feet, nothing more. After a long pause, he turned back to the camp, unease tickling at his neck, sickening his gut. Gwenna was cursing, trying to get comfortable, and Talal and Pyrre kept shifting, searching for a position that might keep off the worst of the rain.