The Providence of Fire (91 page)

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 disgust. “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.

The Ishien went through first, backward, somehow keeping his balance as Kaden strove to bring him down. Even as they moved, Kaden could feel the other man shifting, adjusting, dropping his weapon and bringing his hands to bear, starting a pivot that would end with a throw. Kaden had no doubt he would be on the ground in moments, his face pressed into the dirt, but the man didn't have moments. The hot sun winked out as they slipped through the invisible surface of the
kenta
into a stone chamber lit on all sides by torches, a stone chamber guarded by a dozen men, half of them with crossbows.

Silence reigned for a heartbeat. Then the first bolts leapt from the bows, outpacing the shouts of alarm that followed, the quick responses of reflex and fight moving so much faster than understanding. Several must have flown wide, but Kaden could feel at least two of the bolts punch into his adversary's flesh, jolting them both. The man didn't cry out, didn't so much as groan, but Kaden could feel him hesitate, sagging as the steel lodged tight. Emotion should have come over Kaden then—relief or fear or savage joy—but there was no emotion inside the emptiness. He had accomplished one goal. Many remained. Quickly, he pulled himself free of the corpse, considered the rounded
kenta
chamber, then stepped back through the gate into the blinding sun.

He'd been gone just a few heartbeats, but everything had changed. The man he'd dragged through the
kenta,
who was now lying dead on the other side in some secret chamber beneath the Dawn Palace, had been the one guarding Kiel. Which meant that, at least for the moment, the Csestriim was free. His wrists remained bound behind him, but that hadn't stopped him from moving to the
kenta
leading to the Shin chapterhouse, hadn't prevented him from kicking Matol's legs out from under him as he emerged.

It was a feeble attack, and the Ishien commander was already rising to his feet, teeth bared, but he had dropped Tan's
naczal,
and Kaden took it up, the shaft cool and smooth in his hands. The violence seemed to have jolted Triste fully awake, and she writhed in the arms of her captor like a caught wolf, screaming and scratching, biting and clawing. The Ishien was larger, but the same brutal strength with which the girl had broken Matol's hand back in the Dead Heart seemed to have surfaced once more.

Kaden circled them, cool and distant inside the
vaniate,
considering his options. The
naczal
was deadly in Tan's hands, but he wasn't even sure which end to strike with. Any effort to attack Triste's captor was just as likely to hurt her as it was to reach the Ishien. He watched, searching for an opening, seeing nothing but a flurry of arms and struggling flesh. It was no good. He wasn't Valyn or Pyrre. The monks hadn't possessed so much as a single sword. He'd stayed alive in Annur this long only by deflecting and dodging attacks, pitting the strength of one foe against another: Adiv's men against the Ishien, the aristocrats against the imperial guards, the soldiers on the other side of the
kenta
against whoever he had shoved through. The strategy had worked, until now. On the green circle of grass, cliffs dropping into the wide blue sea on every side, there was no more dodging to be had, no more deflecting. It was time to fight, and Kaden knew nothing of fighting.

“I've changed my mind,” Matol said. “I'm not taking you back to rot with your teacher. I'm going to gut you right here.”

He stooped, never taking his eyes from Kaden's face, to pick up the sword dropped by his lost companion. The other Ishien shifted, blades at the ready, faces closed.
The vaniate,
Kaden realized. He wasn't the only one acting from inside the trance. They
were all
inside the
vaniate,
all except Triste, who had redoubled her thrashing.

As Matol talked, Kiel slipped to Kaden's side.

“Cut me free,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to the rope knotting his hands.

Matol pointed his sword at Kaden. “You murdered my man to help
this
inhuman scum, and you're still helping him, dancing when he says dance, like a demented puppet. I'm going to put this steel in your flesh, and I'm going to watch you squirm. You should thank me. I'm going to cut the strings.”

Kaden ignored him, turning instead to slit the rope binding Kiel's wrists. The rough fiber parted effortlessly beneath the
naczal
blade. That made two of them free. Kaden hesitated, then handed the spear to Kiel.

“Can you use this?”

The Csestriim took it, sighted down the shaft. “It has been many centuries,” he said, spinning the blade in a smooth, practiced motion, “but the memory is strong.”

Kiel slid in front of Kaden, blocking Matol's advance, and suddenly the odds didn't look so long. Matol's jaw tightened. Evidently his reading of the scene mirrored Kaden's own.

“Billick,” he said, turning to one of the remaining soldiers. “Get the others. They're just beyond the Cavaltin gate. You can be back in twenty breaths.”

Kaden had no idea where Cavaltin was, or which
kenta
led to it, but it hardly mattered. Somewhere, somewhere close, more Ishien waited, maybe dozens more, heavily armed and ready. When they came, there would be no escape. It was just a fact, true as the sky above them was true. Billick charged across the green sward, passed through the
kenta,
then vanished. Triste chose that moment to twist in her captor's grasp, sink her teeth into his collar, and then, as he roared and jerked back, to wrench free.

Matol cursed, shook his head, then spat into the grass. Triste's panicked escape had thrown her almost directly into the man's path, and he stepped forward, raised his sword, then hacked down in a vicious arc. Kaden could only watch as the sword fell toward her head, but Kiel was quicker, sliding the
naczal
into the gap, deflecting Matol's blow into the dull earth. The Csestriim withdrew the spear, preparing another thrust, but before he could move, Triste staggered to her feet. Kaden expected her to flee, to hurl herself away from the blades, but instead she lunged forward into Matol, her face drawn with fear and fury, eyes wide as suns, hands clutching around his back, pulling him close even as she drove them both back.

“Get off me, you soulless whore,” Matol spat. He twisted, but couldn't wrench free. With his sword arm trapped against his side, he couldn't bring the blade to bear.

“It is you,” Triste murmured, “who abandoned your soul.”

No,
Kaden realized
. That isn't Triste
. The frightened child who had sobbed in his pavilion back in Ashk'lan was gone, replaced by the woman who had shattered Matol's wrist weeks earlier. The Ishien was older than her, taller and stronger, but Triste was bearing him up and back somehow, forcing him to give ground, her muscles bent to the task, tendons straining in her legs, the backs of her knees, her neck. Strangely, she was smiling, full lips parted with the effort of breath.

“I warned you,” she said, voice lapidary as polished stone, “that this day would come.”

Matol struggled and cursed and lost ground. She was forcing him toward the
kenta,
and for a moment Kaden thought he understood her plan, thought she intended to force him through into the hail of crossbow bolts as he had the other Ishien. The plan had worked once; it could work again. Only she was moving toward the wrong
kenta,
toward the gate that led back into the basement of the Shin chapterhouse.

“No, Triste,” he shouted, gesturing to the palace gate, “the other one. The
other
one!”

She ignored him.

“You gave up your soul,” she said. “You thought you had burned it out with your vicious rituals, your petty faith in the power of pain.” She laughed, a full, throaty laugh. “Pain is so limited.”

“I'll show you pain, bitch.”

The two remaining Ishien moved toward the
kenta
and their commander, but Kiel was faster, stepping forward to block them, raising the
naczal
.

“I'll show you pain like you'd never believe,” Matol snarled, dropping his sword, wrenching his hand free and scrabbling with it at her throat.

“You would be shocked, you weak little man, at what I believe.”

Matol's fingers closed around her neck, but Triste just smiled, pulling him closer, then pressing her lips to his. Kaden stared as she wrapped him in her embrace, her eyes closed with something like rapture as she moved against him, hip to hip, mouth to mouth, like lovers in desperate ecstasy. The Ishien was still choking her even as his mouth opened to her kiss, responding to some animal call older than thought, older than hate. Triste clutching at his free arm, pressing it back, back through the space of the
kenta
 …

Matol jerked as though stabbed, tried to shout, to pull away, but Triste's hand was locked on the back of his neck. He yanked his arm from the
kenta,
only there was no arm left, just a blank slab of flesh with two circles of bone at the center, butchered as though with an impossibly sharp cleaver. Bone and flesh. Then blood in a fountain.