The Providence of Fire

15

It proved nearly impossible to track the passage of days inside the cold chambers of the Dead Heart. There was no sun or moon. There were no stars to follow in their circuit through the sky, nothing but smoke, and damp, and the constant stench of salted fish. Kaden was given his own small cell in which to sleep, but whenever he opened the door he found a guard outside-sometimes Trant, sometimes another of the Ishien. Each time, he demanded information about Tan or Triste, neither of whom he’d seen since arriving, and each time he was refused. His own impotence in the face of the armed soldiers was galling, but he couldn’t think of any way around it. The Ishien had blades and bows; he did not. The Ishien had military training; he did not. He briefly considered trying to wrest a weapon from one of his guards, but could dream up no scenario in which such defiance ended in anything other than his own death or imprisonment.

While the guards allowed him to move freely between his cell and the mess hall, the rest of the fortress was off-limits. At first, Kaden tried spending more time at the long tables where the men ate, hoping he might learn something about Triste or the Csestriim. The Ishien, however, proved guarded to the point of paranoia. Some glared at him, clutching to their silence like a shield. Some screamed in his face. Most simply ignored him, moving around him as though he were no more than another wooden chair.

It was maddening not to know what was going on, either inside the Dead Heart or beyond. For all Kaden knew, Annur had fallen into the grip of some Csestriim tyrant while he wandered the subterranean halls. His frustration, however, was solving nothing, and so he crushed it out, gave up talking to the Ishien altogether, and started spending the majority of his time in his cell instead, cross-legged on the stone floor, practicing the vaniate.

The trance didn’t seem important, not compared to Triste’s imprisonment, or the uncertainty of Valyn’s fate, or the murder of the Emperor of Annur. But Kaden couldn’t do anything about Triste, or Valyn, or his own dead father. What he could do was practice the vaniate. He could make sure that if the time came when he needed it, he would be ready.

Despite having entered the trance several times in the Bone Mountains, he still found it surprisingly fickle and elusive. Some days he could fall into the emptiness after only a few breaths; others, the whole exercise proved impossible, like trying to grasp an air bubble under the water. He could see it, but not feel it. Touch it, but not hold on to it. When he closed his mind’s fist around its shimmering absence, it slipped away.

With nothing else to occupy his hours he set about the task grimly, pausing each day only to eat a little fish, to use the crude latrine carved into the stone a few doors down, to sleep in brief stretches. There was no way to tell time in the sunless, starless dark of the Heart. He pushed himself until sleep claimed him where he sat, slept as long as his body allowed, and then when he woke to sharp stone against his cheek, or a pressure in his bladder, or the unremitting chill of the place, he would rise, blink away the exhaustion, square himself once more in the center of his cell, and close his eyes. It was a grim study, but it gave a shape to his shapeless days, and after a time he found he could slide in and out of the emptiness almost at will.

At least while motionless. With his eyes closed.

When he’d mastered that, he set about entering the trance with his eyes open. It was far more difficult, as though the world itself blocked him from the blankness, but he kept doggedly at it, determined to wrest some value from the long, dark days. He was in the middle of just such an effort, staring at the flame of his lone candle, willing away his self, when Tan pulled open the heavy wooden door, stepping into the space before Kaden could register surprise or alarm.

The older monk took in the scene at a glance, then nodded. “The emptiness comes more easily now.”

It was not a question, but Kaden nodded, grinding away his confusion, surprise, and irritation at Tan’s unexpected arrival.

“You should be able to reach it running,” the monk said. “Fighting.”

“I’m still working on just keeping my eyes open.”

Tan shook his head. “Not anymore. Not now. Come with me.”

Kaden stared. “Where are we going? Where have you been?”

“With the Ishien. Trying to learn something about the girl.”

“While I’ve been a prisoner.”

“I warned you that we took a risk in coming here.”

“We?” Kaden asked. “It looks like you have the run of the place.”

“Does it?” Tan asked, fixing him with a stare. “Is that what you have decided after observing me so closely?”

“You’re not locked in a cell.”

“Neither are you,” Tan said, turning to the door behind them, pulling it firmly shut. When he turned back to Kaden, he lowered his voice. “The Ishien distrust me for leaving, and they distrust me for returning. My position here is almost as tenuous as yours. Any support I offer you will weigh against me in their scales.”

He fell silent, but the rest was clear: Tan was the only link between Kaden and the outside world. If the Ishien turned on the older monk, really turned on him, they were all finished.

“All right,” Kaden said slowly, “I understand. How is Triste? What are they doing to her?”

Tan considered the question, gaze weighing, measuring. “They do not understand what she is.” Another pause. “Neither do I.”

“What do you mean?”

“What we’ve observed is inconsistent. We need more information.”

Kaden frowned. “And that’s why you’re here,” he said after a moment. “That’s why you’ve come to me. Why they sent you to me.”

Tan nodded. “Triste knows you. She appears to trust you. The Ishien believe, as I do, that she might reveal something to you.”

“Has she said anything about my father? About Annur or the plot against my family?”

“No. As I said, we need more information.”

Kaden stared. “The Ishien have kept me penned in here for what … weeks? A month? And now they want help?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I help them? Why would I conspire with my jailers against Triste, who has done nothing but help me from the first night we met?”

“You will help,” Tan said, voice blunt as an ax, “because if you do not, you may never leave this cave.”

Kaden took a deep breath. Two. The monk had only said what Kaden himself had been thinking since the day he stepped through the kenta. And yet, hearing someone else speak the words made them real.

“The girl is not what you think,” Tan continued, “and even if she were, you cannot afford loyalty. Not here. Not among these men. You help no one, Triste included, if you die in an Ishien cell.”

Beneath his ribs, Kaden’s heart bucked. He haltered it, soothed the animal part of him that wanted to kick, to bite, to flee, then nodded.

“Where do we go?”

“To the cells.”

The cells. Which meant he’d be leaving this section of the Heart, that he’d be seeing new territory. It wasn’t much, but it was more than he had now. Greater knowledge of the prison’s layout might suggest the location of the exits, and it looked more and more likely that a time might come when he needed one of those exits.

“All right,” he said quietly, “I’ll go.”

Tan held up a hand. “There is more.”

Kaden shook his head. “More?”

“The Ishien are bringing up another prisoner at the same time. They want to surprise the girl, to overwhelm her, to shock her into revealing something.”

“What prisoner?” Kaden asked, confused. “Why would Triste reveal anything to some poor soul the Ishien have locked up in their dungeons?”

“Because he is Csestriim,” Tan said after a long pause. “And he is dangerous.”

Kaden stilled his pulse, controlled his face. “They have a Csestriim. Is there anything else I should know?”

Tan nodded slowly. “The current leader of the Ishien is a man named Matol. Be careful of him. In his own way, he is as dangerous as the prisoner.”

* * *

“The bitch of it is,” Ekhard Matol explained, spitting onto the damp floor to emphasize his irritation, “that the Csestriim don’t respond to torture the way we do.”

Though Tan claimed that Matol was the commander of the Dead Heart, he wore no uniform or mark of rank, dressing in the standard wool and leather, the garments moth-eaten and battered. He was short and thick, with fists like hammers, a nose like a chisel, and a badly pockmarked face. Physically he looked nothing like Trant-he must have been at least ten years older, for one thing-but the same air of unwholesome dampness clung to him, the same feral intensity burned in his eyes. And, like Trant and Tan, like all the Ishien Kaden had encountered, scars webbed his flesh.

Tan had led the way wordlessly through winding corridors, past two banded doors, past a trio of guards, then into the cramped antechamber beyond, a small room furnished with a low wooden table and a single chair, in which Matol sat. Kaden hadn’t expected an apology for his earlier treatment, but the man didn’t so much as acknowledge it. Kaden might have been a menial or slave, an insignificant underling who had been called upon to perform a task. That Matol spoke to him at all seemed an indulgence.

“What have you done to her?” Kaden asked, trying to keep his voice level, the question objective.

“The usual,” Matol replied with a shrug, gesturing to the door behind him, presumably the entrance to Triste’s cell. “Slivers of glass under the fingernails. Thumbscrews. First-round stuff. We’ve left her alone for quite a while now, to give her a chance to heal up, to get her nice and complacent before we start again.”

Kaden’s stomach twisted inside him, but he kept his expression even, his face calm.

“I don’t want her hurt any further,” he said, trying to project something like his father’s imperial authority.

Matol furrowed his brow, got slowly to his feet, then walked around the small table, pausing when his face was inches from Kaden’s own. He smiled, the expression sharp as a blade, then whispered, “Maybe Rampuri didn’t tell you. Maybe he forgot how we do things in the years he’s been away, so let me fill you in.…” He took a deep breath, then screamed, “WE ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING SUBJECTS!”

Kaden was accustomed to monastic disapproval, to the slow shaking of heads, and even to the brutal penance that often followed. This sudden explosion, however, was something else altogether, and he rocked back on his heels as though he’d been struck.

“Maybe not,” he replied finally, trying to steady himself. It wouldn’t do to show he could be cowed by a fit of shouting. “But we are on the same side in a very old fight.”

Matol shrugged, his momentary fury utterly vanished. “Used to be, but the Ishien remembered their charge, held to their post, while you and your family abandoned it long ago.” He paused, as though waiting for Kaden to object, then pressed ahead. “When we’re finished with this bitch, which might take some time, I’ll have questions for you. I want to know about this plot against your family.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Not because I would care if the people of Annur rose up and gutted every living Malkeenian, but because this is how they work, the Csestriim. They find a structure, an order at the heart of our world, something we created, and then they go to work on it, chipping at the walls, undermining the foundation, until it crashes down, until we’re crushed by the very thing we built.” He stared at Kaden, eyes wide and furious. Then, abruptly, he laughed. “Which is why I might need to keep you here for a year or ten. After all, if we’re using you, then they’re not.”

A chill ran up Kaden’s spine.

He glanced over at Tan for some sign of tacit support, but the older monk’s face betrayed nothing, and he made no move to speak. Kaden swallowed the insult and the fear both. Pride and fear were illusions-dangerous illusions, in this case. Here, hidden beneath tons of stone and sea, cut away from the cloth of society, a man like Matol could do whatever he wished. Kaden wasn’t going to help Triste or Annur by insisting on his own honor.

This is why we have courts and laws, he thought to himself. This is why we have an emperor.

When Kaden first learned of the Ishien, their mandate had sounded like a noble cause, like something pure. That single-minded purpose, however, stripped of the aegis of law and tradition, religion and the order religion brought, began to look very much like madness. For the Ishien, anything was justified if it might lead to the Csestriim. Any lie. Any torture. Any murder.

“Is there anything new from the girl?” Tan asked.

Matol snorted. “Same shit. Sobs, begs, whimpers, tells us she hasn’t done anything wrong. Problem is, she doesn’t squirm right.” He turned to Kaden, brows raised as though waiting for the obvious question. When Kaden held his peace, the man blew out an irritated breath and explained.

“The enemy look human, but they’re not. They’re not right,” he tapped his head with a grimy finger, “in here. When it comes to torture, they feel the pain-Meshkent has his bloody hooks in them, same way he does in the rest of us-but they don’t feel the fear. They’re older than the young gods. Kaveraa can’t touch them.”

Kaden turned the claim over in his mind, trying to imagine what it might be like to encounter pain without the fear of pain. Like experiencing starvation without hunger.

“So what’s the point?” he asked finally. “If you think Triste is Csestriim and Csestriim don’t respond to torture, why are you driving shards of glass under her fingernails?”

Matol grinned. “Well, we weren’t sure she was Csestriim, were we? And I didn’t say they don’t respond. I said they don’t respond right. The old archives point out that you can usually tell a Csestriim spy from the lack of terror.”

“But Triste’s terrified. You just said that. She begs and pleads.”

“Sometimes,” Matol acknowledged, then leaned in so close that Kaden could smell the fish on his breath as he hissed, “but she doesn’t beg right.”

“You still haven’t said what that means.”

The man paused, staring at some unseen point in the air as he marshaled his memories of pain and pleading. “There’s a certain … shape to terror. A kind of writhing of the body, a rhythm to the screams. Everyone responds differently to fear and pain, but beneath the difference there’s something human trying to shove its way out. If you know what to look for, you can recognize that thing, that human thing.”

Kaden shook his head. “How can you recognize it?”

Matol smiled, a wide vulpine smile. “Because I’ve been through it.” He raised his hands, and Kaden noticed for the first time that scars marred the ends of his fingers where the nails should have been.

“The pain,” Kaden said quietly.

The man nodded. “So someone has bothered to educate you about our ways.”

“It seems,” Kaden began slowly, “that what you do to yourselves is worse than what the Csestriim might do.”

Matol stared, teeth bright in the lamplight. “It seems that way, does it? It fucking seems that way?”

He looked away suddenly, studying the scars as though he’d never seen them before, as though they were something utterly alien and unknowable, then turned his glare back on Kaden.

“This, all of this, everything we know about pain-we learned it from the Csestriim, from their manuals, their books, from the hundreds of years of meticulous history in which they tortured and killed us. You think this is bad?” He shoved his scarred hands in Kaden’s face. “You think this is worse than what the Csestriim might do? This is the fucking mild shit. This would have been a relief for our ancestors.”

Kaden forced himself to look at the scars for three heartbeats, forced himself to keep his face calm, impassive. That the Ishien were sick, broken, was growing clearer and clearer, but he could feel a hard truth in Matol’s words, and unbidden, the memory of the skeletons in Assare filled his mind, the small, clutching hands, the skulls. If the Ishien were broken, it was the Csestriim who had shattered them.

“Enough talk,” Tan said, gesturing to the door.

Matol shook his head. “We’re waiting for someone. Someone I want her to see.” He narrowed his lids, looking slyly from Tan to Kaden, then back. “I told Rampuri not to mention it, but I suspect he told you something about our other prisoner.” He stabbed Kaden roughly in the chest with an extended finger. “Didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

Kaden held his breathing steady. Inhale. Exhale. In and out.

“What other prisoner?”

* * *

At first glance, the other prisoner appeared neither deadly nor immortal.

The Shin warned their acolytes about the dangers of expectation, the power of anticipation to distort both sight and memory. Kaden had, accordingly, avoided putting a face to the Csestriim menace. They don’t look like monsters, he reminded himself as he waited for the prisoner to be hauled up from the deeper dungeons. They were able to pass as human. Even the man’s name was unremarkable: Kiel. It might have been the name of a baker, a fisherman.

He’d been shocked to discover that the Ishien already had a prisoner, one of the immortal beings they had hunted for so long, but once he accepted the notion, he thought he was prepared for anything. When the guards kicked open the door, however, and shoved their charge through, hands bound before him with a stout length of rope, Kaden realized he’d been expecting something after all, something harder, more formidable.

Kiel was an old man, stooped and hesitant, a faint limp marring his already uncertain gait. Scars puckered his face and hands-a delicate tracery of white lines punctuated by blunt, ugly weals, the result, Kaden surmised queasily, of heated steel. The Csestriim looked dark-skinned, but when he put a hand to his face to scrub the tangled hair from his eyes, Kaden realized that most of the darkness resulted from layers of filth and grime. The man’s apparent age, too, was an illusion-cleaned and healthy he might look only halfway into his fourth decade. Even so, he was a far cry from the formidable monster Kaden had unknowingly expected.

Then he raised his eyes.

It was hard for Kaden to articulate, even to himself, what he saw there. Kiel’s eyes were certainly less striking than his own blazing irises, less arresting than Valyn’s blackened gaze. They were ordinary eyes, and yet, Kaden realized as the man studied him, they did not match the body. That body had been rent and battered by years of unrelenting questioning, and when the prisoner moved, it was clear that things had been torn and shattered inside. The eyes, however, were unbroken.

Kiel glanced briefly at Matol, considered Kaden for half a heartbeat, then turned to Tan.

“Rampuri,” he said, his voice quiet and lean, like smoke in the air after the fire has been doused. Kaden had to resist the urge to lean forward. “I have not seen you in a very long time.”

Tan nodded, though the monk did not speak.

“I thought you had forgotten me down in my quiet cell. I almost came to miss the company afforded by torture.”

“We did not bring you up for further torture,” Tan said.

Kiel pursed his lips. “Is it time, finally, to die?”

“It’s time,” Matol cut in, shards of impatience edging his voice, “to do what you’re told.”

The prisoner glanced down at his bound hands, over his shoulder at the armed guard standing behind him.

“It would seem you’ve given me very little choice. Perhaps you could tell me how long I’ve been in my cell?”

“Not long enough,” Matol replied. “But you’ll have plenty more time to stare at the darkness once we’ve finished here.”

Kiel considered his interlocutor for a long moment, seemed about to say something more, then turned his attention unexpectedly to Kaden.

“Rampuri and Ekhard I know, but you and I have not met, though I knew your father well.…”

Matol’s fist took Kiel in the gut before he could finish speaking, doubling him over.

“Keep your mouth shut and your lies to yourself, or I’ll see you spend the next twenty years in a box instead of a cell.”

After a long fit of coughing, the prisoner straightened slowly, then caught Kaden’s eye for the barest fraction of a heartbeat.

I knew your father well.

Kaden struggled to make sense of the claim. It seemed unlikely, beyond unlikely, but then, what did Kaden really know about his father? Growing up, he had admired Sanlitun with a child’s mindless admiration, worshipped him absolutely but ignorantly. Only after he was sent away, years after, did he begin to realize how slenderly he had known the man, how little he understood what drove him, what he wanted or feared.

Kaden had taken strength, through the most dire of his monastic trials, in thinking that his suffering at the hands of the Shin was the same suffering his father had experienced decades before, that the running and digging, carrying and fasting, were actually bringing him closer to Sanlitun, despite the gulf of miles between them, that one day, when Kaden returned to Annur, they would sit down together, one man with another, not just to learn the necessary apparatus of government, but to really talk for the first time.

That possibility had shattered like old crockery when Adiv’s treacherous delegation arrived in Ashk’lan. There would be no reunion. No discussion. No meeting as men. Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian remained remote as the graven statue of him that looked down sternly on the Godsway. Kaden had no idea if his father had preferred water or wine, let alone whether or not he would have conferred with the Csestriim. He considered the prisoner once more, the begrimed face, the unwavering eyes. Would Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian have broken bread with such a creature? There was just no way to know.

“May I ask,” Kiel said quietly, when he’d straightened up, “why I am here?” He gestured to the doors leading into the torture cells. “Are you certain it’s not for more pain?”

“There is another prisoner,” Tan replied. “One we want you to see.”

A look that might have been curiosity crossed Kiel’s haggard face. “One of my kind? Who?”

“That,” Tan said, “is what you are here to tell us.”

* * *

It was almost possible, in the dim light of the low-ceilinged cell, to believe that Triste was just resting, that the heavy wooden chair to which she’d been chained was just another chair, that the lanterns had been turned low to accommodate an easier sleep. As Kaden’s eyes adjusted, however, he could make out the steel manacles binding her wrists and ankles, the streaks of tears on her grimy face, thin lacerations running the length of her arms. Clearly she had been flogged or whipped.

“Couldn’t you give her a cloak?” he asked.

Matol snorted. “Are all you Shin so tenderhearted?” Then, as though to a small child, “This is how torture works. You start on the mind well before you begin with the body.”

Kaden couldn’t pull his eyes from that body, from the angry strips of red where the flesh had broken. Horror welled up inside him. The Shin had taught him to deal with emotion, but never in the face of such savagery. When he finally managed to look away from the wounds, he found that Triste had opened her own eyes, that she was staring at him silently in the flickering light.

“Kaden,” she said quietly. His name in her mouth sounded like a plea and an accusation both, and he realized that she had been watching him stare.

He opened his mouth to respond, but no response came. He had no comfort to offer, no promise of reprieve. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he had been summoned. “I’m here,” he said finally, the words weak on his tongue. “I’m here.”

“How touching,” Matol observed. “He’s here, which means we can get started again. But first…” He motioned curtly, and the two guards holding Kiel shoved him forward as Matol himself reached out, seized Triste by the hair, and twisted her head viciously around.

“Look,” he demanded, shaking her roughly by the hair. “Look.”

Silent convulsions racked her body. Kaden still wasn’t sure what the older men hoped to achieve. It seemed to him that even if Triste and Kiel were both Csestriim, even if they did know each other, they would have the good sense to conceal the fact. On the other hand, the shock of recognition after what might be thousands of years was something you would notice, at least in a human. Did the Csestriim feel surprise? It was too late to ask Tan now. He considered Kiel’s face, carving the moving image for later scrutiny.

The Csestriim, for his part, showed nothing more than a bland curiosity, raising an eyebrow.

“A beautiful young woman,” he observed quietly.

“Are you with them?” Triste asked, hope and fear tangled in her voice. “What do you want?”

“No,” Kiel replied, “I am not with them. And I imagine you and I want similar things: freedom, light.”

“Help me,” Triste begged.

“I wish I could,” he said, raising his tied hands, “but as you see, I am powerless to help myself.”

“Why?” she asked.

“This is what they do,” he replied. “But you can take solace in this: Ananshael is stronger than Meshkent; in the end, death will release you from the pain.”

Triste’s voice, so lost and baffled just a heartbeat before, went suddenly hard as steel. “Do not presume to lecture me on the ministrations of Meshkent.” She set the words before her like knives, sharp and precise.

Kiel’s eyes widened. He tilted his head to one side, evidently interested for the first time in his fellow prisoner. Triste stared defiantly back at him, turned her gaze to Matol, then back to Kiel. She had barely moved, but everything had changed. The terrified girl of moments before had molted away like a dead skin.

“Tell me,” Kiel said quietly. “Tell me about your pain.”

Triste repeated the word slowly. “Pain.” She might have been savoring a bloody cut of meat.

“Yes,” Kiel said again. “When did you first encounter pain?”

Triste laughed, a full-throated, opulent, predatory laugh that made something deep inside Kaden quail. The sound went on and on, filling the tiny room, pressing back against the walls, battering at the stone itself until, abruptly, it was not laughing, but sobbing once again.

“Please let me go,” she whispered, voice ragged. “Please just let me go.”

Matol glanced at Tan. “Anything?”

Tan paused, then shook his head. “Only more of what we have already seen.”

“What about you?” the Ishien commander asked, turning to Kaden. “What do you make of that luscious burst of defiance?”

Kaden took a deep breath, looked inward at the saama’an of the preceding moments, trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed. That shift in Triste’s tone, the sudden strangeness in her eyes, the careening between poise and panic … He’d seen something like it back in Ashk’lan, in goats with brain rot. A creature in the advanced stages would stand placidly for hours, empty, angular pupils fixed on the horizon, unresponsive to gentle stroke or vicious strike, to food or speech. Then, with no provocation at all, with no warning, that strange, animal gaze would focus abruptly and the goat would attack anything that moved, charging, thrashing with its hooves, hooking the horns over and over. The diseased creatures had always discomfited Kaden, something about their lack of consistency, of continuity. He had felt the same queasiness in his stomach during Triste’s transformation, but he couldn’t say that to Matol, not if he ever hoped to convince the man to set Triste free.

“I think she’s exhausted,” he said finally, keeping his voice level, matter-of-fact. “I think she’s terrified. You want to see a Csestriim, and so that’s what you find. All I see is a frightened young woman who has done nothing to deserve this. I see you breaking a friend of mine.”

It was several leagues wide of the truth, but the Ishien commander didn’t seem to notice. He just spat onto the stone floor.

“What in ’Shael’s name have the Shin been teaching you?”

“To observe,” Kaden replied.

“Obviously not.”

He turned abruptly from Kaden, gestured to the guards to pull Kiel back into the shadows, then focused once more on Triste.

“Too bad for you,” he said, addressing the woman. “I thought we’d try something new, but it looks like we’re back to doing things the old-fashioned way.”

He waved a hand, and another guard, one who had been standing in the shadows, stepped forward. Smirking, he handed over a wooden box. It clanked ominously when Matol set it on the rough table next to the slab. He flipped the lid, and paused for a moment, looking from Triste to the tools and back again.

“Do you have any requests?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you what-you can pick the body part, and I’ll pick the tool.”

Triste shook her head weakly in protest. “No,” she pleaded. “Please, no.”

“No?” He pursed his lips. “You want to pick the tool and I pick the body part? We can do it that way if you want, but I don’t recommend it. Better for you to pick the body part.”

“Kaden,” Triste panted, twisting in the chair, pulling against her restraints until blood trickled, black and thick, down the flesh of her wrists.

“Yes,” Matol agreed amiably. “That’s Kaden. Although it’ll be harder to recognize him after we go to work on your eyes.”

Kaden turned to Tan. “You have to stop this.”

The monk shook his head. “What Matol does is necessary. The girl is not what you think.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think-” Kaden began, but Matol’s scream cut him off.

“One more fucking WORD about stopping and I will chain you to the wall behind her and burn off your sad little cock just for the fucking FUN of it. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

“No,” Kaden said, forcing himself to stand straight, to meet the man’s eye. “I do not understand. I don’t understand either your obsession, which looks like blindness, or your methods, which don’t work.”

“Kaden,” Tan cut in, voice sharp with warning. “You are not here to judge.”

Kaden shook his head. “What am I here for?”

“You were here,” Matol said, voice rising, neck bulging, “to tell us something fucking useful. AND YOU FAILED!”

“I told you what I saw, but you are unable to listen.”

Matol looked ready to seize him by the throat, to hurl him to the ground and choke the life out of him. And then, with horrifying suddenness, the snarl vanished. The tendons in his neck and hands loosened. He was smiling, a wide, toothy smile. The emotional swings were almost more frightening than the rage itself. It seemed as though something had come loose inside the man, unlatched, like a stable door blasted open by a storm, hung on a single, rusted hinge, slamming open and shut, open and shut, over and over and over.

“You could help,” Matol suggested finally, waving a long serrated blade in Kaden’s direction. He frowned at the blade, then seemed to think better of it. “Now that I think about it, never mind. You’d probably just fuck it up. Take off a whole leg or a tit or something and have her bleed out.”

“Observe,” Tan murmured to Kaden. “Enter the vaniate if you must.”

Kaden tried to still his pulse enough to find the trance, but the sick twist in his gut nagged at him until he thought he would be ill. Matol hemmed and hawed for a while, fiddled with a vicious variety of blades, hooks, and small vises, before tossing everything back in the box and selecting a lamp from its hook on the wall instead.

“Fire,” he grinned. “Sometimes I get so carried away with the tools that I forget about fire.”

With a practiced motion he unscrewed the base from the glass shield until the naked flame, hissing and reeking of low-grade oil, licked at the air. Triste’s eyes widened. She started to moan.

“Please,” she begged. “I’ve told you everything.”

“You have not,” Matol replied, testing the flame with his finger, then wincing at the heat.

“What do you want?”

“I want to know where you learned to read Csestriim script.”

Triste’s eyes took on a desperate, hunted look. “In the temple,” she managed. “They taught me everything, everything but the high mysteries. Every leina learns languages, sometimes more than a dozen.” She was babbling, terrified. “Men come from all over Eridroa and Vash, all over the world.…”

Matol shook his head. “You told me earlier that you didn’t know where you learned it.”

“I forgot! There was so much I learned-music, dancing, language. They taught me a little. I remember now, a few words when I was very young!”

She twisted against her bonds as she spoke. Observe, Kaden told himself. Just observe. He threw himself into the Carved Mind, etching the strokes of the saama’an as the scene unfolded, using the discipline as a shield against what was taking place.

“You’re claiming that the whores of Ciena taught you ‘just a few words’ of the Csestriim tongue in case … what? In case a creature everyone else in the world believes was destroyed thousands of years ago wanders in hankering for a fuck?” He laughed a long mirthless laugh at the absurdity of the notion. “Manderseen,” he said at last, gesturing toward the smirking guard, “hold the lamp here while I take this young lady’s hand.”

The Ishien guard stepped forward, smirk broadening into a grin. Matol took Triste’s wrist almost gently in his larger, scarred hard, then pulled it toward the flame. The girl let out a low wail as the fire lapped at her skin, her fingers scrabbling like the legs of some tormented creature. “Please,” she moaned, body convulsing, legs thrashing, as though the movement could carry her hand from the fire. “Please!” Her voice rose and rose into a high, horrible keening.

Observe, Kaden told himself, forcing his hands to his side. There was nothing he could do, and besides, he’d burned himself more severely on several occasions working in the kitchens back at Ashk’lan. Of course, this was only the beginning.

Matol released her hand finally. Two of the fingers were red and blistered, the kind of burn that would only heal after a night in an ice bucket and a week in wrappings. Triste tried to pull it to her chest, but the shackle would not permit her. Her eyes were still open, but she wasn’t focused on anything beyond the looming horror of her own pain.

“It looks like real fright,” Kaden murmured to Tan. “She’s not faking it.”

To his surprise, the monk actually seemed to consider his words, then shook his head. “Keep watching.”

“How did you use the kenta?” Matol asked, passing his own hand back and forth through the flame idly, quickly enough to avoid a burn.

“I don’t know,” she panted. “I’d never seen a kenta.” There was something strange about the way she said the word, and Kaden filed it away for further consideration. “I’d never even heard of one before a couple of days ago. I just … I fell and I came out the other side.”

“You see,” Matol said, turning to the other two Ishien. “The girl is perfectly innocent. She simply fell.”

The one named Manderseen chuckled. “Maybe we should let her go.”

“Maybe,” Matol replied, pretending to consider the notion. Then he shook his head. “Nah. Let’s hurt her some more.”

What happened next took place too quickly to comprehend. Kaden was focused on the scene as Matol reached for her wrist, his mind sketching the saama’an. It wasn’t until later, however, when he had a chance to fully scrutinize the vision, that he really saw what had happened. Even then it didn’t make sense.

Triste, practically gibbering with terror a moment before, twisted as Matol reached for her. The manacle didn’t afford much freedom, but as his hand started to close, she lashed out and caught his wrist instead. The movement was precise, almost too quick to see, like a serpent darting from a bush. Matol didn’t have a chance to register surprise before she pulled, a savage tug somehow strong enough to yank the man off his balance, tumbling him half on top of her, forcing Manderseen to drop the lantern with a curse and fall backward. Triste leaned close to the Ishien commander, her lips by his ear.

“A time will come,” she hissed in a voice every bit as cold and dark as the surrounding stone, a voice utterly devoid of fear, “when the pain you visit on me here will seem a dream of pleasure, when blades and fire seem tender ministrations to you. I will, then, watch you beg, but stoppered to your cries will be my ears, and dried to dust the wide lake of my mercy.”

She was twisting, Kaden realized, her slender fingers twisting Matol’s broad hand with a savage strength until something snapped, the man’s face contorted, and, his balance regained at last, he lurched toward the wall, cradling the broken hand and cursing.

The whole thing lasted several breaths, but Rampuri Tan made no move to intervene, neither to stop Triste nor to help Manderseen or Matol. His eyes remained on the girl the entire time, measuring, parsing.

“Did you see?” he murmured when it was done.

Kaden nodded dumbly. He could only stare. For a moment Triste locked eyes with him, and her gaze was … what? He groped for the word. Feral? Regal? Language failed. Then, like water slipping through a sieve, the look drained away.

“Kaden?” she whispered, voice small and shattered, filled with fear once more. “Kaden, please. Please help me.”

For a moment, no one moved. Shock had scrubbed the smirk from Manderseen’s face, and he stared at Triste, baffled. Tan also watched the girl, though with none of the Ishien’s confusion, as did Kiel, his eyes still as pools, tied arms relaxed before him, supported by the frozen guards at his side. Triste looked from one face to the next, evidently reading the confusion and slow-gathering fury scribbled through the expressions of the Ishien.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”

The words seemed to jar Matol from a waking dream. He raised his broken hand, staring at it a moment as though it were some small creature broken in a trap, then turned his gaze on Triste.

“Oh yes,” he said, stepping toward her once again. The pain from his mangled hand must have been excruciating, but he ignored it, gesturing instead to Manderseen. “Oh yes, indeed. Bring me something hot, or hard, or sharp,” he barked. “Better yet, all three. I’m through lavishing this bitch in gentle caresses. It’s time to cut her deep, to see what’s really inside.”

“No,” Kaden said, surprised to hear the syllable slip from his own throat. It was madness to intervene, suicide, especially now, especially with Matol caught in the grip of this new, cold rage. And yet, he found himself stepping forward. “This isn’t working,” he said. “Your whole approach isn’t working.”

“Stand aside, Kaden,” Tan said. His voice was quiet, but the syllables were built of stone.

Kaden shook his head. “I’ve stood aside for days. Longer.” He could feel the blood racing in his veins, started to slow it, then let it run. He could kill the emotion, but he needed it now, needed his own anger if he was going to hold his ground against Matol and the rest, if he was going to do anything for Triste.

“I understand that she’s not what she seems,” he said. “I see it now. I understand that she may even be Csestriim, but this”-he gestured to the hard, bloody tools-“is not the way. It is not working.”

Matol turned from Triste to stare at him. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “You come here, to my fortress, into my Heart, you bring this inhuman whore into this sanctuary, and then you defend her? Hmm?”

“I’m not defending her-” Kaden began.

Matol cut him off. “You think you’re going to tell me, tell me how to fight this fight when your own family just up and quit? Is that it?”

“Enough,” Tan said.

“Oh, I quite agree,” Matol replied, still quiet, still sharp. “It is enough. It is well past enough.”

“Take him,” he said, gesturing to Kaden. “Find him a cell down below along with the other one.” A finger flicked at Kiel. “Something with a heavy door.”

Manderseen stepped forward, but Kaden twisted away, unsure whether he wanted to put himself between Triste and the Ishien or use the chair to which she was shackled as a shield. She was watching him with huge, frightened eyes. Kiel, too, was watching him, silent and impassive from across the room.

“Tan,” Kaden said, trying to find the words.

“Get over here,” Manderseen spat.

Slowly, slowly, Rampuri Tan shook his head. “This was your choice. Not mine.”

Kaden seized a knife from the table at Triste’s side, brandishing it before him. He had no idea how to fight, but he had watched Valyn and the others back in the mountains, had carved the images on his brain for future use, and as the Ishien guard came on he tried to approximate the pose.

Manderseen paused, then unlimbered the sword at his side, the grin coming back to his face. “Kill him?”

Matol didn’t answer. Kaden risked a glance behind him just as a fist took him across the face, knocking him clean into the wall. The attack jarred the knife from his hand, and Manderseen was on him in a moment, all steel and strength, shoving Kaden’s body against the stone.

“Kill him?” he asked again.

Kaden struggled to turn, to see Matol, but Manderseen had his head shoved over at a brutal angle. The only person he could see was Kiel. The Csestriim had made no move to struggle or intervene, but as Kaden watched, his lips moved silently, mouthing the shape of words. Everyone else was staring at Kaden. Only Kaden was watching Kiel, even as he strained to breathe.

He’s talking to me, he realized. That the man expected him to follow, to be able to unfold the shape of the words, seemed unbelievable. Kaden himself was bleeding from the head, blood slick on his face, and the Ishien sword was at his throat. Kiel ignored all of it. If he really had known Kaden’s father, then he knew something of the monks, and if he knew the monks, knew about the training and discipline, then he knew about the Carved Mind. He knew Kaden would remember the scene later. Remember it perfectly.

“I would not kill him.” Tan’s voice this time. Distant. Indifferent. “He is the Emperor, and may prove useful still.”

“I could take out an eye,” Manderseen suggested with a chuckle, shifting a hand to press against Kaden’s eyeball. “Maybe crush one of his nuts. What were you saying about cocks?” He groped between Kaden’s legs. “We could see how loyal he is to this bitch after we rip his cock off.…”

Silence loud as a scream.

“Take him below,” Matol snarled finally. “Lock him up with the Csestriim. He may know more than he’s told us. We’ll take a look at his blood after we get through with hers.”