The Providence of Fire (90 page)

“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 make 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?”