The Providence of Fire

28

Kaden crashed out of the kenta soaked and gasping for breath, lungs heaving in great desperate gulps of clean air, limbs leaden and useless. His mind registered only that he had moved from a frigid wet darkness into a warm day brilliant as the sun, and for a few heartbeats he allowed himself to simply lie on the soft grass, still swaddled in the vaniate, drinking in the sweet sea breeze. A few feet away he could hear Triste retching onto the ground, her body struggling to force out the salt water at the same time as she was trying to breathe. Kiel’s own breaths were quieter, more measured, and after a moment Kaden could hear the Csestriim rising to his feet.

“Quickly,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is only the hub linking the gates, and Rampuri Tan will not kill all of them.”

“They can’t follow,” Triste gasped. “Not the way we came.”

“They will not have to. When they have dealt with Tan, they will realize where we went, and they will come through the gate after us. We have to be well gone from here when that happens.”

Kaden nodded, rising unsteadily to his feet. He recognized the island, the ring of slender arches around the perimeter, although it felt like years since he had last stood upon it. Since then … He shook his head, cutting off the thought. Best not to think on the past, on what it would mean for the Ishien to deal with Tan. The vaniate wavered. Best to move forward.

He glanced around the green sward. The gate from Assare, he knew, but the writing above the others meant nothing.

“Which way?”

“Annur?” Kiel asked.

Kaden nodded.

The Csestriim indicated an arch a dozen paces distant. Kaden helped Triste to her feet, helped her stumble across the rough ground, watched her vanish as she stepped once more into the kenta, then followed her through, moving from bright light into a dry, dusty darkness. For a moment he just stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did not, he let the vaniate slough away. His limbs were still weak from the lack of air, still trembling. His burning irises illuminated little more than his hand before his face.

“Where are we?”

“Underground,” Kiel replied. “In a section of Annur long forgotten. The Ishien know of this place, but no one else.”

“Let’s go,” Triste said, her voice tight as a bowstring. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Follow precisely in my footsteps,” Kiel replied. “The Ishien have set traps around this gate, and there are other dangers in the forgotten tunnels beneath the city.”

The three of them spent the next hour winding their way through nearly absolute darkness. At several junctures, Kaden caught sight of stacks of bones-femurs, skulls, heaps of fingers dry and brittle as kindling-stretching back into the cavernous black. Triste kept a hand on Kaden’s shoulder. He could feel her trembling, though whether with cold or fear or the lingering pain of the wounds the Ishien had inflicted he wasn’t sure. Kiel showed no hesitation as he moved through the darkness.

“How can you see?” Triste asked at one point.

“I don’t need to see,” the Csestriim replied. “I have the map in my head.”

“That’s impossible,” she replied.

“Ask Kaden.”

Kaden tried to imagine the vast network of tunnels, discovering to his surprise that he’d been making a map of his own since they left the kenta, some diligent portion of his mind toiling away marking each branch, each fork, each cavern through which they passed.

“Memory,” Kiel said, “is a skill like anything else. It can be honed.”

The words were true enough, but when they finally shoved aside a slab of stone and stepped blinking from the darkness into blinding light, Kaden discovered anew the limits of his memory. They stood in a green leafy cemetery wedged between walls and buildings atop a low hill. While Kiel muscled the stone slab back into place, Kaden just stared. That the Ishien were behind them, he had no doubt. They needed to be away from the graveyard, and fast, but for the space of a few heartbeats, he found himself unable to move, nailed to the spot as he breathed in the sea salt and smoky air of Annur.

His memories of the city, sketched in his young mind before he’d ever heard of the Shin or the saama’an, were bright but static: the looming red walls of the Dawn Palace, the crystalline spike of Intarra’s Spear, the pale green of the copper roofs and the dark green of the canals, the white of the statues along the Godsway, and the bottomless blue of the Broken Bay, stretching away to the east. The shapes, too, he remembered, a jumbled geometry of warehouses and palaces, straight streets and crooked alleyways. Everything else, he had forgotten: the noise, the smell, the press of bodies. The heat.

Even in the relative tranquillity of the graveyard, he could feel the city moving around him like some great, feverish beast, and when they slipped through the gate and into the streets, he felt as though Annur had swallowed him whole. The clatter of carts over the flagstones, the clop of hooves, the shouting of drivers and pedestrians jostling for space on the surrounding streets all but obliterated the rustle of the wind-tossed leaves.

Kaden half-expected everyone they passed to stop, stare, exclaim. After all, the three of them, though mostly dry, were still wearing the same mismatched, tattered garb in which they’d fled the Ishien. In Ashk’lan, someone would have noticed instantly, but Annur was not Ashk’lan. This city of a million souls threw her own cloak over them, an anonymity thicker than any wool, while she veiled the eyes of the passers-by in their own busy indifference.

Eyes safely hidden inside the hood of his cloak, Kaden walked through the streets as though in a dream, a stranger exploring the maze of his own memories. After the vast, cool emptiness of Ashk’lan, where half the world was sky, the city felt almost unbearably present. The reek of sizzling oil, of garlic, of peppers and frying fish made him feel as though he was half choking, while the constant tolling of gongs and bells made it hard to sort his thoughts into any type of order.

For a while he just followed Kiel, keeping his eyes down to hide his gaze and to limit the riot of color and motion battering at his mind. Outside the vaniate, he could feel for the first time what had happened back in those final awful moments in the Dead Heart. That Rampuri Tan was dead or a prisoner of the Ishien there could be no doubt, and yet questions and doubts, like so many carrion crows, circled and circled. Had Kaden himself, through some idiotic slipup, caused the attack? He went over the events again and again, studying in his mind the scenes in his cell, in the corridors beyond. Had he made too much noise? Had he botched the timing? There was no way to know. There was only the fact: Tan was gone while he, Kaden, was free, walking the streets of Annur.

He risked a quick glance up at the chaos of those streets, then ducked his head, questioning once more the wisdom of sending him away to Ashk’lan for training. What he had in common with the impatient, reckless people jostling him he had no idea, no idea how he would talk to them, or make sense of their answers. They were Annurians, and he the Emperor of Annur, but they might have been exotic birds, or apes for all Kaden understood them.

Finally, Kiel pulled Kaden and Triste into a narrow alleyway off the main street. It stank of rotted food and urine, but Kaden welcomed the shadows, the relative quiet, the respite.

“We should be safe,” the Csestriim said. “We’re a mile from the graveyard, and we’ve left no trail to follow.”

Kaden looked up. People-dozens, hundreds-swarmed past the narrow entrance to the alleyway, but no one so much as glanced in their direction. They could have been invisible.

“Where are we?” Kaden asked.

“Old Sticks,” Kiel replied. “A small quarter wedged between the Silk Canal and the Fourth. There used to be some small-scale banking and a market for fresh flowers.” He shrugged. “That was fifteen years ago.”

Kaden grimaced. He’d never heard of Old Sticks, never known that there was such a thing as a market for fresh flowers. He’d returned, finally, to his city, to the center of his empire, to discover that he was a stranger in his own land.

“The monk,” Triste said, glancing toward the head of the alley. The bruising on her face, the burns on her hands, looked worse, much worse outside of the Dead Heart, in the full light of day. “Do you think he followed us? Do you think he made it out?” Kaden thought of Tan’s naczal pressed against Triste’s throat, of Tan ordering her tied up like livestock, and he wondered if she hoped he had escaped the Ishien or not.

“He couldn’t follow,” Kaden said. “Not the way we went.”

“Rampuri Tan is a formidable hand with his spear,” Kiel said, “but not that formidable.”

“So he is dead,” Triste said dully.

“He is beyond our reach,” Kaden replied, trying to move past his own tumult of emotion, to focus on the dirt beneath his feet, the stench of the air.

Triste studied him for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” she said. “Where do we go now?”

Kiel shook his head. “I kept a few rooms near here,” he said. “I thought perhaps they would still be empty, but we passed them four streets back. It looks as though someone new is living there.”

“In your rooms?” Kaden asked. “How could they just move in?”

Kiel shrugged. “Fifteen years is a long time to be gone.”

Kaden shook his head, trying to imagine fifteen years among the Ishien, fifteen years locked in the darkness, the only thing waiting beyond the steel door, pain. It could drive a man mad, but then, Kiel was not a man. Kaden turned to face the Csestriim.

“What now?”

Kiel met the stare. “You are the Emperor.”

“For you, I mean. We were tied together during the escape, but we are not any longer. Why are you still with us? With me?”

The Csestriim looked past Kaden to the mouth of the alley, where men and women, oxen and children, jostled in the bright light of the sun. “Your history,” he said finally.

Kaden raised his brows. “My history?”

“Not just yours. That of your whole race.” He paused, frowned, then went on. “As I told you, I was the historian of my people. I have spent a very long life in the study of cities and nations, wars and brief periods of fitful peace.”

“You said you knew my father,” Kaden insisted. “That you worked with him.”

Kiel nodded. “I chronicled his life, or a part of it-his time on the Unhewn Throne.”

“But why?” Kaden demanded, coming back to his original question. Clearly the historian had no part in his father’s death-he had been imprisoned in the Dead Heart for almost two decades-and yet he was Csestriim, built from the same flesh, his mind patterned on the same alien thoughts as the creatures who had burst into Assare millennia earlier to murder the children. “Why would you chronicle us? Humans? Why would you help me?”

To his surprise, Kiel smiled. “You are interesting. Your race is interesting, even more so than my own. Humans are unpredictable, self-contradictory. Where our history was a long account of reasoned debate, yours is ablaze with error and ambition, regret and hope, love and loathing, all the things we cannot feel, all animating your every decision. Most of my kind wanted to see you crushed from the start, but I … I was curious. I remain curious.” He shrugged. “As for why I would help you, in particular: as I said, you are the Emperor of Annur. I can come no closer to the unfolding of history.”

Kaden watched the man a moment, then nodded slowly. It made a strange sort of sense. More, he realized he wanted to trust the historian, wanted another person on his side, someone who understood something of the empire he was supposed to rule.

“Thank you,” he said. “For helping us break free.”

Kiel frowned. “We are free, but not secure. We still have not decided our next step.”

“The chapterhouse,” Kaden said. “The Shin branch where we agreed to meet Valyn. We’ve missed the meeting by weeks, but he could be waiting there. He could have left a message, instructions, a warning.”

The Csestriim nodded. “I know the place. It’s near here, but the Ishien know it, too.”

“The Ishien don’t know where we are,” Kaden said.

“By now they know we’ve escaped.”

Triste shook her head. “There were at least twenty gates back on that island. We could have gone through any of them.”

Kaden blew out a long breath. “But we did nothing to cover our tracks. Matol will be able to follow us.”

“And Tan knows where we planned to meet Valyn,” Triste said reluctantly, picking at a nasty crescent scab on the back of her wrist. “If he told Matol, the bastard doesn’t need to track us.”

Kaden hesitated, staring out the end of the alley, watching the wagons and water buffalo, the men and women flowing by like a current.

“We have to go,” he said, “now. The Ishien, if they even know where we’re going, will take time to follow us here, time to get to the chapterhouse. I just need a few minutes to find out if Valyn’s been there.”

“It’s a risk,” Kiel observed.

“Everything’s a risk,” Kaden said. “Waiting will only make it worse.”

* * *

The Shin chapterhouse didn’t look like much: a narrow brick face-maybe ten paces wide and three stories high-crammed between two larger buildings at the border of a small cobbled square in one of Annur’s quieter quarters. Nothing marked it as a chapterhouse, which wasn’t surprising; the monks Kaden knew had never been much for crests or sigils. There was just the blank brick, the blank wooden door, and several windows on the upper floor, all firmly shuttered.

The rest of the elm-fringed square hummed with quiet activity-people hanging laundry out of windows, men and women bartering in the rough wooden stalls of a market, two water buffalo with noses buried in a stone trough-but around the chapterhouse there was nothing, no one, no ornament, not even flowers in the bare gravel fronting the structure. The place might have been abandoned, save for the tenuous line of smoke rising silently into the sky. There was no sign of Valyn, but then, Kaden’s brother would hardly be lounging in the shade in front of the temple with his kettral leashed to a tree. A score of other buildings fronted the square-houses and shops, a wine store with bottles racked high in front of it, a stately old mansion that had seen better days, windowpanes broken, front yard unkempt, utterly uninhabited by the look of it. There was no way to search them all hoping to find Valyn. The only way to know if he had visited the Shin was to knock.

“Stay here,” Kaden said. “I’ll be fast.”

“What should we do if the Ishien come?” Triste asked. She looked as though she were trying to watch every direction at once, trying to study every stranger.

Kaden shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“There is a way out,” Kiel said, “from inside.”

“A back door?”

“A kenta,” the Csestriim replied.

Triste blanched. “Matol and Tan could be in there already! They could be waiting for him!”

“No,” Kiel said. “It’s a different network. My people built more than one, in case the first were destroyed or compromised.”

“And the island we just came from…” Kaden asked, absorbing the new information, trying to work through the implications.

“That is one hub, a hub controlled by the Ishien. The gates lead various places-Assare, the Dead Heart, the catacombs from which we just emerged.…”

“And what about this?” Kaden asked, nodding toward the chapterhouse.

“This is your network,” Kiel replied. “The imperial network. The one entrusted to your family. The Ishien know of it, but they do not patrol it. It does not connect directly to the Dead Heart. If you hear any struggle or violence, you can escape through the kenta. It’s in the deepest basement.”

Kaden frowned. “Where does it lead?”

“To another hub, an island much like the one we just left.”

“And once I’m on the island?”

“Take the second gate to your right. It will bring you to a flooded area beneath the docks of Olon. Once in the city, you should be able to lose yourself in the crowd.”

Kaden stared, trying to imagine the escape. He could point to Olon on a map, but that was about it. He had no sense of the climate or culture, the manners of the local people.

“If I flee to Olon,” he said, “I’ll be hundreds of miles from Annur, with no way to get back.”

“Which, I assume, is preferable to the Dead Heart,” Kiel said. “It is only a precaution.”

Kaden took a deep breath, then nodded.

“Remember, the second gate to your right. Not the first one.”

“Where does that lead?”

“The Dawn Palace,” Kiel replied. “If you burst through there, you’ll be filled with arrows before you hit the ground.”

* * *

The monk who greeted Kaden at the door, a dark-skinned man with dark eyes, graying hair, and a slight limp, glanced once at his eyes, once at his clothes, then nodded as though in response to some interior question, gesturing him inside with a slight motion of his hand. Kaden was ready with a bushel of explanations-who he was, where he had come from, what he wanted-but the monk said nothing, escorting him to a small chamber with a wooden stool, an earthenware ewer, and a single cup on a low table. He filled the cup with clear water, passed it to Kaden, then straightened.

“Wait here, brother, while I bring Iaapa.”

Without another word, the monk slipped out the door on bare, silent feet, leaving Kaden alone holding the rough cup. Urgency pressed down on him like the air before a storm, heavy and pregnant. It was possible Matol and his men were outside even as he waited, watching the chapterhouse, preparing to enter, possible they had already captured Kiel and Triste.…

Calm, Kaden told himself, lifting the cup to his lips, taking a small sip, holding the water on his tongue, moving it around the inside of the mouth, then feeling it snake down his throat, cool against the heat that burned inside him. He waited three heartbeats, took another sip, and the anxiety retreated. A moment later Iaapa stepped into the room.

“A visitor from Ashk’lan,” he said, round face creasing into a smile. “It is more than a year since we have welcomed a brother from the Bone Mountains.”

Aside from Phirum Prumm, Iaapa was the only fat monk Kaden had ever seen, a short man with skin pale as milk and ears that stuck out as though tacked to the sides of his spherical head. He shared no physical resemblance with Scial Nin, the abbot of Ashk’lan, but there was a similar distance in the gaze, a stillness of the body, that suggested many years spent in the discipline of the Blank God.

“What is the word from the other end of the world?”

Kaden hesitated, the pushed ahead. “The word is bleak. Ashk’lan is destroyed and the monks are dead.”

Another man might have reeled at the account, raged against it, demanded evidence or explanation. Iaapa simply pursed his lips, waiting silently for Kaden to continue.

“I can’t tell you the whole thing,” Kaden said. “There’s no time. Soldiers came for me, Aedolian guardsmen commanded by Tarik Adiv, my father’s Mizran Councillor. It seems to have been part of a plot to destroy my entire family.”

“And the monks?” Iaapa asked finally. “We take no part in the politics of the empire.”

“Adiv was thorough,” Kaden replied bleakly.

“Then we will need to send others to Ashk’lan to rebuild.”

There was no mention of mourning, but then, the Shin did not mourn. A part of Kaden felt as though he had abandoned the bodies of the monks at Ashk’lan, but the monks themselves did little more for their dead, carrying them up the trail to the high places where the wind, weather, and ravens could break apart the final illusion of the self. After just a few weeks with people who held their selves and their survival sacrosanct, Kaden had forgotten how lightly the monks who raised him regarded the powers of Ananshael.

“How have you returned here?” Iaapa asked.

“I don’t have time to explain. Men may be coming for me even now.” Kaden glanced around the small room. “My brother, Valyn. Has he come here? It would have been weeks ago, most likely.”

Iaapa shook his head slowly. “We have had no visitors for months.”

Kaden’s stomach dropped. It was the news he had feared. There were a few possible ways to read Valyn’s failure to return, but by far the most plausible was the bleakest: the Flea had killed him. Killed him or taken him prisoner. Kaden thought back to the madness inside the ancient orphanage of Assare, to the smoke and the screaming, the confusion and desperation. Kaden himself had barely escaped, and he’d had the kenta.…

Grief welled within him, but he quelled it, let it drain away with his breath. Whether Valyn was alive or dead, grief would not help him, and there was no time for it.

“What do you know of the Ishien?” Kaden asked.

Iaapa raised his brows. “A little.”

“They will come here,” Kaden said. Even if Tan had told them nothing, they would look for Kaden among the monks that had raised him. “You can’t tell them I’m in the city.”

The fat monk raised two hands, as though to hold the treachery and scheming at bay.

“As you know, brother, the Shin do not deal in politics or secrets.”

“But we deal in silences,” Kaden replied, “and I am begging for your silence. They are not like us, not really, and they are dangerous.”

Iaapa frowned. “I have heard … stories.”

“They’re probably true,” Kaden said, glancing over his shoulder toward the door. “In fact, it might be best for you, for all of you, to leave here for a month, several months. To go somewhere more remote. Somewhere safe.”

“Safety,” Iaapa replied quietly, poking at his head with a wide finger, “is here.”

Kaden sucked an irritated breath between his teeth. He didn’t have time to argue with the man, to explain just how thoroughy the Aedolians had gutted Ashk’lan, how the Shin had burned just like other men when their buildings blazed around them. Even if he had the time, there was no reason to believe his argument would sway the monk. Fleeing harm, for the Shin, was as foolish as hoarding pleasure; both were paths leading only to disappointment.

He hesitated, then rose to his feet, bowing his head in respect.

“I thank you for your time,” he said quietly.

Iaapa remained seated, but he nodded in return.

That seemed to conclude the audience, but just as Kaden reached the door, the monk spoke once again.

“Your father came here often,” Iaapa said, “through the gate. Sometimes for just an hour, sometimes for a night, when he wanted rest from the weight of his other duties.”

Kaden stared as the monk smiled. “You are welcome, too, whenever you have need of rest.”

* * *

Despite Iaapa’s offer, there was no possibility of remaining at the chapterhouse. The whole meeting had taken less time than the boiling of a pot of water, and even that felt like a risk. Matol would come looking, most likely sooner than later, and it would be safer for everyone if Kaden was nowhere near the monks when he did.

“Valyn hasn’t been here,” he said, looking from Kiel to Triste, careful to keep his voice down and his hood pulled forward. “And they haven’t seen Valyn.”

“They killed him,” Triste said quietly, staring at him. “The other Kettral killed him.”

“It’s just speculation,” Kaden said, then bowed his head. “But it’s likely. In either case, we’re on our own. We have no idea what’s going on in the city, no sense of who’s in charge, who killed my father, who sent Ut and Adiv after me. We need a place to stay while we ask the questions.”

Triste frowned. “A hostel,” she suggested finally. “Or an inn.”

“Better than sleeping in the streets,” Kiel agreed.

“But we don’t have any money,” Triste said.

The Csestriim shook his head. “Actually, I have a great deal of money.”

Kaden stared.

“Compounded interest is a powerful force for someone with my longevity.”

Kaden shook his head. “Compounded interest?”

“A bank,” Kiel explained. “They pay you for the use of your money. The longer they use it, the more they pay.”

Kaden glanced over at Triste, but her face was as blank as his own. Again he felt the jarring shock of his return, the futility of the task before him. He’d heard of banks as a child, of course. He’d imagined them to be great stone palaces piled with bricks of silver and gold. The Shin had taught him nothing of compounded interest.

“Which bank?” Triste asked. “The sooner we have the coin, the sooner we can get off the street.” She hadn’t stopped looking furtively toward the entrance to the alleyway, as though expecting Matol to step out of the sunlight any moment.

“No,” Kaden said, shaking his head slowly. “It’s too risky.”

Triste turned on him. “What’s the risk?”

“The Ishien. They captured Kiel fifteen years ago. They might know about the bank. Might look there.”

“It’s unlikely,” the Csestriim replied. “They don’t know the name I used.”

“Unlikely is not impossible. The Shin had an exercise, a technique, the beshra’an.…”

“The Thrown Mind,” Kiel said. “It was our skill before it became yours.”

“Then you know that Matol can use it. It’s possible they have used it. They may have found your bank. For all we know, the people in those rooms of yours are Ishien, living there, waiting, just on the off chance that another Csestriim shows up looking for you.”

Kiel looked out at the street a moment, face blank as a page, unreadable. Finally he nodded. “All right. We’ll avoid the rooms and the bank. But that leaves us with no coin and no safe place to lodge.”

“Do you know anyone in the city?” Kaden asked.

Kiel started to respond, but Triste spoke first. “I do.”

Her eyes were wide with something that might have been fear or hope or both, and she had clutched her hands together so tightly the knuckles had gone white.

“Your mother,” Kaden said, the realization settling into place like the last stone in a carefully built wall.

She nodded.

“Did you tell Matol who she was?”

She hesitated, then nodded once more.

“Then they’ll know to look there.”

“He won’t be able to,” Triste replied, seized with a sudden vehemence. “The temple is enormous, and it’s built for discretion. There are dozens of entrances, most of them hidden, so that the patrons can come and go without attracting notice. If we can get inside, my mother will hide us. I know she will.”

Kiel held his hands up, trying to slow the conversation. “What temple? Who is your mother?”

“She is a leina,” Triste replied, her voice hard and defiant, inviting him to mock her.

He just raised his eyebrows. “A priestess of Ciena.”

She nodded. “It’s perfect: Annur’s richest, most powerful men and women patronize the leinas, and my mother used to tell me ‘Lust loosens the tongue.’ If there’s something worth knowing in Annur, we can learn it there.”

* * *

For a sacred structure dedicated to all the pleasures of mankind, Ciena’s temple didn’t look like much from the outside. It was huge, no doubt, sprawling over more than a city block, but all Kaden could see from the street was a blank stone wall six or seven times his height, the whole thing crawling with flowering vines but otherwise unadorned. Aside from the size, it wouldn’t have been so out of place in Ashk’lan.

“I expected more…” He searched for the right word. “… extravagance.”

“It’s all on the inside,” Triste replied. “Like true pleasure.”

Kaden stared at the nondescript stone. “All right. How do we get inside?”

The cobbler’s shop was small, but the shoes perched behind the glass windows-shoes in every color and shape, from delicate sandals to boots that would stretch halfway up the thigh, shoes made of soft leather and snakeskin and dark exotic wood-looked as though each pair cost at least a golden sun. Reinforcing the impression, two men stood flanking the door, hands on the pommels of their swords. Both were immaculately groomed and armored, but they had the hard eyes and scarred faces of seasoned fighters.

The closest one ran his gaze skeptically over Kaden and Kiel, then raised a palm.

“Nothing your size here, I’m afraid.”

Triste pressed forward, and the guard hesitated, looking her up and down. She murmured something Kaden couldn’t make out, and the man glanced at his companion.

“You know her?”

The other frowned, shook his head.

Triste glanced up and down the crowded street, then tugged down the collar of her shirt to reveal the delicate necklace inked around her neck. The guard’s eyes rose. She hissed something else, and, to Kaden’s relief, he nodded, stepped back, then gestured to the interior of the shop.

“Now that I think of it, I believe there may be something that fits you after all.”

The inside of the shop smelled of cedar and fine leather. Mirrors worth more than Ashk’lan’s entire flock stood against the wall, angled to provide the best possible view of the feet and ankles. Kaden found himself staring at his rough boots, but before he could think to scrape away some of the grime, the shopkeeper, a wide woman in a dress of very fine silk, bustled into the room. She took one look at Triste’s tattoo, then waved them back through a curtain blocking off the end of the shop. She studiously avoided looking at either Kaden or Kiel as she led them down a long hallway to a heavy wooden door, then slipped a key on a chain from between her breasts. The lock opened with a heavy click. She lifted a lantern from a hook inside the door, lit it, then handed it to Triste. Eyes still downcast, she gestured them down a flight of stairs.

“Be welcome to the home of the goddess,” she murmured as they passed. “May you find inside the pleasure you seek.”

Only after they’d descended the stairs and walked fifty paces through a tunnel floored with burnished black stone and paneled with shining maple did Kaden venture to speak.

“What did you tell them back there?”

“I told them my mother’s name, that the two of you were her patrons. That you were wearing a hood because you didn’t want to be recognized and that if they left us standing in the street for another moment, I would see that they were flogged and their employment terminated.”

Kiel frowned. “You bullied your way past the guards? That would seem to be weak security.”

“Not really,” she replied. “It was the tattoo that got me through. That and the fact that I…” She hesitated, coloring. “I look the part.”

“Really?” Kaden asked, raising his brows. He gestured to her burns, to the lacerations cut into her skin. Even without the obvious wounds, Triste was filthy, hardly the image of a pampered priestess.

She bit her lip. “Not all of Ciena’s gifts are made of silk and fine wine. There are … rougher pleasures. This will not be the first time the guards have seen a priest or priestess return to the temple looking … less than pure.”

Kaden grappled with the notion for a moment, then shook his head. “Now what?” he asked. “What happens when we get inside?”

“We find my mother.”

After walking another hundred paces and climbing a spiral staircase, Kaden followed Triste through a second wooden door, this one unlocked, into a small pavilion of cedar and sandalwood. Instead of walls, intricately carved screens shielded them from sight while allowing glimpses of leaves and tree trunks beyond. The noise and chaos of Annur’s streets was gone, replaced by the music of birdsong, the soft gurgling of running water, and from somewhere in the distance, two overlapping melodies picked out on great harps. Green vines spilling over with tiny red flowers twisted through the woodwork, their soft scent twining with that of the cedar and sandalwood. Twin divans upholstered with dark silk and piled with artfully arranged pillows flanked the walls of the pavilion, while between them a small stone fountain trickled water into a clear pool.

A quiet chime sounded as soon as Triste shut the door behind her, and moments later a young man in a simple white robe stepped into the space. Like the shopkeeper, he kept his eyes downcast, a humble posture that did nothing to obscure the perfection of his features. He gestured to the divan.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” he said, setting three filled glasses on a wooden table. “May I ask which of the leina you seek?”

“Louette Morjeta,” Triste replied.

Her voice trembled, and Kaden glanced over to see her biting her lip.

“So,” he said, when the man in white had gone, “this is your home.”

He tried to put a name to the feeling that had been tugging at him since they entered the temple, to trace the various strands of emotion, to follow the weave. There was nervousness, and doubt, despair and hope twisted together, even a thin thread of anger. He watched the feeling snare his body in its net, listening as his pulse quickened and sweat beaded his palms. What is this? Not resentment. Not fear. He considered the silk hangings, the sweat beaded on the blown crystal filled with wine and crushed mint. He watched himself watching the things of the temple, studied his responses.

Embarrassment, he realized finally. It was an unfamiliar emotion, one he’d not experienced with the Shin for many years. It was surprising to encounter it here, now. After all, he’d grown up in the opulence of the Dawn Palace, surrounded by servants and slaves, grown accustomed early to the genuflections of even the highest ministers. It was, he supposed, a testament to the thoroughness of the monks, to their ability to scrub away all such habits, that he felt so out of place now, among the luxury of the temple. The priestesses and priests, even their servants seemed like queens and kings, all poise and perfection, while he felt acutely the dirt beneath his nails, the oiliness of the beaten wool tunic, the rough stubble hazing his chin.

“You didn’t tell me your home was so beautiful,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

She frowned, glanced around as though really seeing the place for the first time, then shrugged. “Your monastery was beautiful.”

Kaden compared the rough stone buildings of his memory with the sweeping curves and sumptuous fabrics surrounding them. “A different kind of beauty.”

“A clean beauty,” Triste said. She lowered her voice. “This place … it’s all wine and silk on the surface, but beneath…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Even in the Temple of Ciena, there are things that are not pretty. And people.”

Before she could say more, however, the screen to the pavilion swung open and a woman surged inside. Kaden had expected the poised reserve he’d seen from everyone else associated with the temple, but she utterly ignored him and Kiel, throwing her arms around Triste in a desperate embrace, sobbing her name over and over. After a long time, she pulled back, staring in horror at her daughter’s wounds.

“Who did this to you?” she demanded.

Triste opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, shaking her head. Morjeta studied her for a few heartbeats, then gathered her daughter in her own arms once again. Kaden couldn’t see Triste’s face, buried as it was in her mother’s shoulder, but her hands closed convulsively around the fabric of the older woman’s gown, and, from the shuddering of her shoulders, it seemed that she, too, was crying.

After a moment he turned away, uncomfortable and unsure where to put his eyes. For eight years the only people to lay their hands on him had been his umials, and then only to administer penance. He tried to imagine how it might feel to be wrapped up in an embrace like that. Imagination failed him. He had envisioned his own homecoming hundreds of times over, especially during the early years with the monks, but neither of his parents, if he remembered them correctly, would have wept, and now both were dead. There was no one in Annur who would throw their arms around him. No one anywhere. Kaden tried to make sense of the subtle tug of feelings the thought aroused in him, but Morjeta, finally, was turning away from Triste, rubbing the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and greeting them.

“A thousand apologies, sirs,” she said. “My daughter has returned after a long absence.” She cocked her head to the side, curiosity shouldering aside the initial welter of emotion, then glanced back at Triste. She shared her daughter’s sleek black hair and delicate features, although Morjeta was taller by several inches, and when she wrapped a protective arm around Triste’s shoulders once more, she made her daughter look younger than her years. “How have you returned? Who are these gentlemen?”

Triste shook her head furtively, gesturing to the wooden screens around them.

Morjeta’s lips tightened, but she nodded, a tiny inclination of the head.

“Once again, you must forgive me. Please, follow me. Once you’ve bathed and dined, it would be my honor to entertain you in more privacy.”