The Providence of Fire (84 page)

Then the arrow took him through the lower back.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The villagers weren't snipers. They were terrified. They couldn't see in the darkness like Kettral. Probably the man or woman who loosed the arrow didn't even see it strike, but Valyn saw it, saw the shaft punch in just below the ribs. Straight through the gut. Maybe the liver.

“No,” Talal breathed next to him, seeing the same thing.

Valyn closed his eyes, but the sounds of screaming horses and dying men battered against his ears. Somewhere swaddled in that chorus of pain and death was Laith's voice. Valyn couldn't hear it, but knew how it sounded all the same, a defiant howl, a furious roar. He opened his lids again to see Laith on his feet, refusing to retreat, swinging his double blades in a narrowed ambit. Valyn wanted to bellow at the flier to get back, to fall behind the barricade, but the flier would never hear him. And Laith had never listened anyway.

Hot tears sheeted down Valyn's cheeks. His heart felt like a stone inside of him, like something that had never been alive.

As he watched, an Urghul spear took Laith through the chest, lifting him up, up. The horseman fell to one of Annick's arrows, but another of the Urghul was already there, leaning precariously over his horse's back to slash down with his sword into Laith's shoulder. Valyn forced himself to keep his eyes open, to witness, as though that would do any good, but even the witness was denied him. Drenched in blood, still clutching the spear sunk in his heart, Laith crumpled beneath the press of horses, then vanished from view.

“Laith.” Valyn wasn't sure he'd said his friend's name aloud.

“May Ananshael be gentle with his soul,” Talal murmured quietly.

Valyn shook his head. Madness filled the bridge, chaos and blood and pain—Ananshael's hand, and it was anything but gentle.

 

45

The Shin chapterhouse looked just as it had days earlier—featureless brick walls, shuttered windows, and a blank wooden door. Of course, it was hard to make out the details from behind the dust-streaked windows of the vacant house.

Behind him, in the wide, pine-paneled room, the members of his would-be council shifted warily. Gabril, Kiel, and Triste had been confused when Kaden led them there several hours earlier, forcing the back door open, then searching the inside of the house until he found the room he wanted, the one facing the square.

“Why are we here?” the First Speaker had asked, turning to take in the moldering space.

“This is where we're meeting the others,” Kaden replied.

Gabril stared. “I told them to meet in the chapterhouse.”

“And I told them, in the notes you delivered, to ignore that, to meet here.”

Triste was shaking her head in confusion. “Why?”

“Because the chapterhouse isn't safe,” Kaden replied. “It's easier to see than to explain. Here,” he said, gesturing to the mouse-eaten furniture strewn across the room, “help me set these chairs up near the window so people have somewhere to sit.”

As it turned out, most of the scions of Annur's great and powerful families, when they finally arrived, preferred to stand. If anything, they seemed to distrust one another more than at their previous meeting. Hands rarely strayed far from knives or swords, and everyone seemed to want a back to the wall. Only Kegellen had availed herself of a chair, subsiding into it with a contented sigh, then propping her feet on another. If she was content, however, the others were not.

“We have been here the better part of an hour,” Tevis snapped finally, “and you have said nothing, done nothing, except stare out these 'Kent-kissing windows. I begin to lose my patience.”

“I suspect,” Kegellen replied languidly, “that you never had much to begin with.” While the others had arrived in various approximations of monastic garb, Kegellen had made no effort to disguise herself. She wore a dress of the brightest yellow, fresh jasmine garlands around both wrists, and a headdress of peacock feathers that fluttered in the breeze. The ensemble struck Kaden as gaudy in the extreme, almost ludicrous, but he noticed that none of the others seated around the long table stared or laughed. The woman might have been all alone, fanning herself gently with an elegantly painted fan. She paused in the motion, then gestured toward the window.

“I, for one, appreciate the opportunity to look out over a quiet square. After all, it is these neighborhood squares, this one and scores like it scattered throughout the streets, that make up the true heart of our great city.” She flicked the fan once more. “Look there at the tiny temple, or there, at that pale-skinned woman selling figs, or at the darling roses climbing the trellis outside the wine shop.…”

“I don't give a fuck for some pauper's wine shop,” Tevis snapped. “Or for the 'Shael-spawned figs.”

For once, Kaden found himself agreeing with the Nishan. The fig vendor and the wine merchant were irrelevant. It was the view over the square itself, and of the Shin chapterhouse in particular, that was crucial. He needed to see what was about to happen, and, more important, he needed
them
to see.

As he had hoped, Triste's trip to the chapterhouse two days prior had gone without incident. She knocked on the door, delivered the note penned in Kaden's own hand, and left. She said that she'd spent half the walk back to the Temple of Pleasure glancing over her shoulder and the other half running, but no one had accosted her, and as far as she could tell no one had followed her, either.

Kaden hoped that she was wrong.

For the twentieth time, he went over the plan. It would have been so much simpler to just
fight,
to attack the Ishien, then Adiv, then il Tornja and Adare, to keep attacking and attacking and attacking until his foes were dead or he was. It might even have been possible with Valyn's Wing at his back, but Valyn had never reached the meeting point. For all Kaden knew, Valyn had never escaped Assare. He put the grief from his mind, focusing on what mattered: he had no Kettral, no way to attack, nothing. It seemed too much to hope that he might take up that nothingness and use it as a weapon.

The memory of Gabril sparring in the courtyard of his palace filled Kaden's mind once more. He watched the motion of the robe as the soldiers circled, watched those long spears stab out, testing, probing. Gabril had offered no resistance—that was the whole point—letting the mistakes of his men lead them to their doom. Yielding, too, offered a way to victory. Of course, it could offer a quick path to death as well. Kaden took a deep breath, and turned back to the assembled aristocrats, wondering which path he had chosen.

“I've given Tarik Adiv your names,” he said, keeping his voice level, calm.

Toward the back of the room, Kiel raised his eyebrows. Triste gasped. A snarl of shock, then a hiss went up from the assembled nobility, dismay and disbelief twisting their faces. After a moment, appalled stares gave way to exclamation and protest, accusatory fingers and a furious clamor of voices. Kaden forced himself to wait, to allow their anger to mount, to let the tension stretch to the point of breaking. For this to work, he needed them scared.

Tevis, however, looked anything but scared. “You worthless shit,” he snarled, hand groping for the rapier at his belt. Gabril started to slide in front of Kaden, but Kaden waved him away, stepping forward to meet the Nishan's advance. Tevis's hand closed around his throat, cutting off the air. Kaden slowed his heart, forced his muscles to relax, glanced over the man's shoulder to lock eyes with Kegellen. Her gaze had gone hard at the revelation, but after a moment she waved a glittering hand.

“Set him down, Tevis,” she said. “We had best learn the full extent of this foolishness. You can always tear his throat out later.”

The nobleman pulled Kaden close to him, his eyes wide with fury, tendons in his neck strained to bursting, then tossed him to the floor. Kaden picked himself up slowly, surreptitiously testing the muscles of his neck. They were bruised, but he'd had worse dozens of times over at the hands of various
umials
. When he finally straightened, he found all eyes fixed on him, gazes sharp as spearpoints.

“Now,” Kegellen continued, her voice deceptively mild, “why don't you explain to us just what sort of mischief you've been up to.” She smiled.

Kaden gathered his thoughts. “I've made sure that Adiv knows I've returned to the city, made sure he knows your names and our intention of overthrowing the empire, our desire to install a republic in its place.”

“It is hardly ‘our' intention,” said Azurtazine, tapping her long, painted nails against the surface of the table, “if I recall our last meeting correctly.”

Kaden smiled. “I omitted that detail. Adiv believes we are of one mind, unified and ready to move against him.”

“I knew I should have cut your throat in the warehouse,” Tevis spat. “I don't intend to repeat the lapse.”

“Cutting my throat now will do little to alleviate the problem,” Kaden observed. “Adiv has your names already. He is unlikely to forget them.”

“May I assume,” Kegellen cut in, “that you've engaged in this little … stunt for some purpose other than your own amusement?”

“My purpose,” Kaden replied evenly, “is to show you the truth.”

Kegellen pouted. “Truth. Such a tricky word.”

As though punctuating her remark, a great gong rang out, shivering the air, echoed across the rooftops by dozens more, all of them tolling the noon hour. Kaden turned to the window, gesturing toward the small square and the Shin chapterhouse beyond. It was time to see if his own quiet fight would play out as he'd hoped.

“Watch,” he said, gesturing to the sunbaked plaza.

For a few heartbeats there was silence. On the cobbles below, men and women went about their midday chores and errands, calling out to one another in greeting or irritation.

“And what,” Kegellen asked finally, “are we watching?”

Kaden's stomach clenched, his shoulders tensed. With an effort he smoothed away the worry. It wouldn't happen right away. Even after the noon gongs, some sort of pause was to be expected. He scanned the square below, searching for any sign, a hint of steel, the clank of armor. Nothing. What would be the consequence, he wondered, if he were wrong? So much hinged on his ability to inhabit the minds of men about whom he knew so little. The
beshra'an
had allowed him to track goats through the mountains, but Adiv was no goat. Matol was no goat. What if one or the other had seen through his trap? What if, even as he watched, they were deploying some elaborate scheme of their own?

Gabril took a step closer to him, face worried, hands on the pommels of his knives. Tevis was still standing, and even Kegellen was starting to look impatient. Kaden glanced back out into the courtyard, studying the front of the Shin chapterhouse. Nothing. Just blank brick and black smoke rising silently into the sky. Nothing. Nothing. And then, from across the small square, a column of fifty men burst into the light, a steel-shod ram at the fore. Kaden breathed out a low, unsteady breath, then held up a finger.

“There,” he said.

The armed men crossed the square at a full run, shattering the door to the chapterhouse with the first blow. As the first six hauled the ram aside, others shoved forward into the breach, blades drawn. Even through the closed windows, Kaden could make out the sound of steel against steel, bellows of fighting, and then, moments later, the first screams of the wounded, of the dying.

“What in 'Shael's name…” Tevis demanded, eyes fixed on the attack.

“Those,” Kaden said calmly, “are Tarik Adiv's men. The attackers.”

“And who are they fighting?” Kegellen asked carefully.

“You,” Kaden replied simply.

Tevis rounded on him, belt knife drawn. “Talk straight, Malkeenian, or you're done talking.”

Kaden glanced down at the bright blade, forced himself to count ten heartbeats before answering. The whole thing could still collapse if it seemed as though he could be bullied by a large man with a knife.

“I gave Adiv your names, and told him we were meeting there,” he gestured, “in the chapterhouse. He expects to find you disguised as monks. He believes, right now, that he is slaughtering you.”

“Why?” Azurtazine cut in, shaking her head. “What's the point?”

“To show you,” Kaden replied, “just how tenuous your position has become.” He paused, looking over the group. Some were watching him, others staring at the blank wall of the chapterhouse, the brick and gaping darkness of the door hiding the vicious fight beyond.

“You hold your secret meetings,” Kaden continued, “you plot and scheme and gripe, and you think yourselves safe behind your hoods and your money. You are not. Adiv, Adare, and il Tornja tolerate you only because they have more dangerous foes.”

“They don't tolerate us,” Azurtazine said, shaking her head. “They don't have any idea that we hate the empire. They don't even know who we are.” She glanced at the doorway across the square. More soldiers were forcing their way forward into the darkness.

“And you thought they wouldn't find out?” Kaden asked, raising his eyebrows. “I've been in the city less than a week. I have no money, no connections, no men. I knew none of you before I arrived, and it took me a matter of days to learn your names, to expose you. If you think my sister and the
kenarang,
backed by the full might of Annur, wouldn't see you hanging for the ravens within a month, you are greater fools than I took you for.”

An angry current passed through the room. It had been centuries since the families of the assembled aristocrats had wielded any real power, but the years had done nothing to blunt their pride. Kaden might have Intarra's eyes, but he lacked the throne, and, aside from Triste and Gabril, he was years younger than the next youngest person in the room. None of them, Bascan or Breatan, pale or dark, man or woman, appreciated being called a fool. On the other hand, the violence below was proving effective theater.