The Providence of Fire

45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kaden hoped that she was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There,” he said.

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

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

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

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

“You,” Kaden replied simply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even as Kaden turned, the shutters barring one of the second-story windows burst open and a man in monk’s robes, sword clutched in one hand, face streaming with blood, fell roaring through the gap, landing with a sickening crunch on the stone below. Adiv’s soldiers fell on him almost immediately, swords rising and falling in a savage butchery that left little but blood and bone smeared across the cobbles.

“By now,” Kaden said, gesturing, “the soldiers are probably realizing that the men inside the chapterhouse are not you, that they were tricked. The realization is likely to fan the councillor’s fury. He tried to take you all in one group, to cut the head from the conspiracy all at once. That failed, he will come to your inns and palaces, he will hunt you through the streets of Annur. If you slip the city walls, he will chase you back to your homes and see you burned or hanged.”

“What is this?” Tevis demanded, face contorted with fury and confusion. “Your petulant revenge because we would not sign your paper?”

“On the contrary,” Kaden replied. “It is a final chance. You would not play your stones, and so I have played them for you.”

Kiel stepped forward from the back of the room, passing him the rolled constitution. Kaden took it, unfurled it, glanced over the words. Outside, the shouting and the screams had stopped. Silence filled the square, pressing against the windows like a storm.

“Individually, you are nothing. If you fight, you will die. If you run, you will die. Even if you escape the city, flee to your homes, and manage to raise a rebellion, my sister and her kenarang will march the legions and put it down.” He paused, letting the fact sink in. “They cannot, however, put down a coordinated push from all of you at once. This”-he gestured to the page-“is both your sword and your shield.”

For a moment no one moved, each trying to gauge the reactions of the others. Then Tevis surged to his feet.

“No!” he swore, reaching for his rapier, shoving his way past the table, cursing at Kegellen when his cloak caught on the arm of her chair. “You scheming Malkeenian fuck, I’ll see you dead, I’ll see you flayed before I so much as-”

The words fell off abruptly. Tevis’s brow furrowed, and he looked down. One of the peacock feathers from Kegellen’s hairpiece stuck incongruously from the hairy curls on his arm. The woman yawned as she drove the shaft of the feather deeper.

Tevis raised a hand, then, face baffled and rapidly turning blue, let it fall. He stared at Kaden, tongue lolling from his mouth, then down at Kegellen. When he finally fell, his face smashed into the table, tearing a gash across his purpled forehead. He thrashed twice on the wooden floor, then fell still.

Kegellen raised her eyebrows, nudged the corpse with a slippered foot, looked at Kaden, then over the small group.

“A man’s entitled to his own opinions,” she said with a shrug, “but not when they look likely to get me killed.”

She returned her attention to Kaden. “Now, who were the poor souls inside the chapterhouse that those soldiers just slaughtered?”

“Not poor souls,” Kaden replied. “A group known as the Ishien. A private foe of my own-one that betrayed me and people I held dear.”

Kegellen flicked open her fan, watching him awhile above the delicate whir of the paper, then nodded.

“I, for one, am feeling a republican spirit stirring in my fat, jolly heart.”

* * *

The signing of the constitution took only a matter of minutes. There were questions, of course, concerns, and demands, but the blood smeared on the stones of the square below and Tevis’s corpse sprawled across the wooden floor muted any real objections. As Kaden had hoped, once the thing was done, once it was clear there would be no turning back, the nobles began to put aside their own bickering in the urgency of the moment. Only when the ink had finally dried, however, only once the others had departed to muster their own personal guards, their money, their friends, any allies they might have in the city, did Kaden finally sit.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Gabril asked, standing by the window. The sun was sinking toward the rooftops, and people had returned to the square, pointing fingers at the chapterhouse, pointing at the blood, exclaiming in loud, worried tones over the violence. “You thought one of us would reveal your secret?”

Triste and Kiel, too, had remained behind with him, and he eyed each of them in turn, gaze lingering on Triste. Finally he nodded.

“I thought I could trust all of you, but I couldn’t be sure. The fewer people who know a thing…” He trailed off, spreading his hands.

Kiel pointed to the window. “It was the Ishien waiting inside the chapterhouse.”

Kaden nodded. “We knew Matol would have the place watched. It was one of the only spots in the city I might go. They wouldn’t take Triste, not until she led them to me, but as soon as she left, there was no reason not to burst in and demand the note that she had delivered.”

Triste was shaking her head. “And it didn’t say anything about Ashk’lan. It said we would be meeting there, in the chapterhouse, just the same way you told us in the temple.”

Kaden nodded. “I needed the Ishien there when Adiv arrived. I needed them to kill each other.”

“And the Shin?” Kiel asked.

“I don’t know,” Kaden said quietly. “For Matol to set the trap, he needed the monks out of the way.…”

Kiel raised his brows. “To Ekhard Matol, ‘out of the way’ usually means ‘dead.’”

Kaden nodded reluctantly. It was a risk, and one he had no right to take for the monks. They were no part of the conspiracy, no part of the Ishien effort to hunt him down. Like the murdered brothers he had left behind in Ashk’lan, those here would have been devoted to quiet, peace, mindfulness, and tranquillity, and Kaden had brought the twin hammers of Ekhard Matol and Tarik Adiv on their sanctuary. He hoped the Ishien might have bound the men instead of killing them, but his hopes were scant protection to those inside. It was one of the reasons he had remained. He needed to see the bodies. To know for sure just how deeply his sacrificial knife had cut.

“And Adiv?” Gabril asked. “How did he come to suspect you were there?”

Kaden glanced at Triste again. She was staring at the blank floor where Tevis had fallen, but looked up as though she felt his eyes upon her. It was there, obvious to anyone who looked. The marvel was he hadn’t seen it earlier.

“Morjeta,” he said quietly.

Kiel frowned, then nodded. Gabril said nothing. Kaden kept his eyes on Triste. For a few heartbeats she just stood there, face blank.

“What?” she asked finally.

“Your mother,” he said, as gently as he could. “She’s the one who told Adiv we would be here. She’s the one who gave him the names, who told him the people he’d be looking for would be dressed as monks but bearing blades.”

Triste stared, then shook her head, slowly at first, then more violently. “No,” she said, eyes blazing. “No.”

Kaden nodded. “Yes.”

It had taken him longer than it should have to piece it all together: the tension in Morjeta’s face when Triste reappeared, her odd insistence on cooperation with the man who had seized her daughter, the very fact that she had allowed Triste to be taken in the first place. And then Adiv’s unexpected arrival in the temple itself.

Oddly, the key had nothing to do with Morjeta at all. The whole thing had clicked into place only when Kaden watched Demivalle face down the Mizran Councillor. He had expected Adiv, with his title and the armed men at his back, to crush any resistance by the priestess. After all, that was the story of Triste’s abduction: the councillor came, he issued threats, and the leinas handed her over. The story looked a good deal less likely after witnessing Demivalle’s unflinching refusal to accommodate his demands.

The question was why? Why would Morjeta willingly give up her daughter? Why would she betray Kaden to the councillor? The answer was scrawled across Triste’s face. Adiv’s blindfold had obscured the resemblance, that and the fact that his skin was a few shades darker than Triste’s, but when Kaden called those faces to mind, when he set them next to each other, there could be no mistaking the shape of the jaw, the elegant line of the nose. Adiv hadn’t wrested an innocent girl from the iron grip of the Temple of Pleasure; he had taken his daughter.

“I don’t think your mother meant to hurt you,” he said carefully. “Tarik Adiv is one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.…” He hesitated, wondering whether or not to reveal the whole truth, then plunged ahead. “And he is your father.”

Her face twisted with fear and revulsion, hands balled into fists at her side. For a moment she stood, a tower of mute fury and grief. Then, with a shriek, she hurled herself at Kaden. He caught her by the shoulders, but her fists rained down on him, pounding against his chest, his head. There was none of the inexplicable strength she had shown back in the Dead Heart, but the blows were powerful enough. As she sobbed, he pushed her back, forced her to stare into his eyes.

“She didn’t betray you,” he said. “Not when she gave you up the first time, and not now. She knows Adiv, she understands his power, his ruthlessness, and she’s frightened for you, frightened that if she doesn’t do something to stop me, he’ll kill us both. She tried to help me, brought me to Gabril, helped to set up the meeting with the nobles. But when Adiv appeared in the temple, she quailed. It must have seemed the game was up, and she did what people so often do-she threw her lot in with what she hoped would be the winning side. She tried to protect herself and her daughter.”

Slowly Triste’s fury subsided, replaced by a blank hopelessness. Her hands dropped, and she backed away, not looking at him, not looking at anything.

“The list of names,” Gabril said quietly.

Kaden nodded. He’d already memorized the list of the conspirators-it was a trivial matter-but he couldn’t trust that Morjeta would remember them perfectly. He’d given her barely enough time with it, but when he returned, there was no doubt-the paper had moved ever so slightly. There was a new tension around the leina’s eyes. Her knuckles were white and bloodless where she clutched her skirts.

“Both of them,” Triste said, her voice lost, flat.

“Both of them what?” Kaden asked.

“They both gave me up,” she replied. “My mother gave me to … him. He gave me to you.”

Kaden opened his mouth to reply, then realized he had no consolation to offer.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “They gave you up.”