The Providence of Fire

8

Valyn stood by the window, cold wind scouring his face, staring out into the night. He had insisted on taking first watch, and the rest of his Wing, accustomed to catching fragments of rest whenever, wherever, converted their coats and packs into makeshift blankets and pillows, arranged weapons for easy access, then dropped abruptly into sleep. The others weren’t far behind, and by the time the first stars were glittering overhead only Kaden remained awake. He sat cross-legged just a pace away, gazing out over the low lintel of the same window. For a long while neither said a word.

“What’s the point in standing watch,” Kaden asked finally, “when you can’t see anything?” He gestured toward the window. “I feel like I’m looking into the bottom of an iron pot.”

Valyn hesitated. He hadn’t told Kaden about his experience in Hull’s Hole, hadn’t told him about the slarn egg or the strange abilities it had conferred, hadn’t told him … anything really.

“Why are you still awake?” he countered. “The plan was to get some sleep before you have to step through that thing.”

Kaden glanced toward the kenta and nodded, but made no move to lie down. “I don’t think a little more sleep is going to tip the balance one way or the other.”

“Those gates are really all over the empire?”

“And beyond it, evidently. They’re many thousands of years older than Annur. The boundaries of the empire weren’t even imagined when the Csestriim built them.”

“But Father knew about them,” Valyn pressed. “He used them?”

Kaden spread his hands. “That’s what the Shin told me.”

“Where is it?” Valyn asked. “The gate in Annur?”

“I don’t know. I never saw anything like this. Never heard of it before the abbot explained it all to me.”

“How do people not know?” Valyn wondered, staring at the gracile arch. “How could Father cross half the world in a heartbeat without anyone suspecting?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Kaden said. “It wouldn’t be as obvious as you think. Say the Emperor steps through a gate from Annur to … oh … Ludgven. The people in Ludgven don’t know that he was in Annur. All they know is that the Emperor arrived unexpectedly. One of the chroniclers could piece it all together later, someone who kept detailed notes and a careful calendar, but it would have been difficult to keep good notes about Father’s coming and going. Half the time even we didn’t know where he was, and we lived in the palace.”

Valyn nodded slowly. Sanlitun had disappeared for days at a time when they were children. “Meditating,” their mother told them. “Praying to Intarra for guidance.” Valyn had never understood the need for all that prayer and contemplation. As he pondered the use of the gates, however, Sanlitun’s self-imposed austerity began to look far less arbitrary. As Hendran wrote: Be a rumor. Be a ghost. Your foes should not believe in your existence. The Emperor of Annur couldn’t afford to recede entirely into rumor, but their father had kept himself so aloof from the day-to-day business of the empire that he could well have disappeared for days without anyone noticing.

“All those years,” Valyn said, shaking his head. “All those years, and we had no idea.”

“We were children.”

“We were children.” Valyn exhaled slowly, watching his breath mist in the cold night air. “There was a lot I wanted to ask him.”

Kaden remained silent such a long time that Valyn thought he had faded off to sleep. When he glanced over, however, he found his brother’s eyes still open, still burning, twin embers in the darkness.

“What does it feel like?” Kaden asked finally. “The grief, I mean.”

Valyn tried to make sense of the question. “For Father?”

“For anyone.”

Valyn shook his head. “You tell me. You just saw your entire monastery destroyed.”

“I did,” Kaden replied, not taking his eyes from the darkness. “I did. There was a little boy, Pater … I watched as Ut stabbed him through the chest.”

“So why are you asking me about grief? Seems like there’s plenty to go around.”

“I’m asking because the monks train it out of you. I felt it when Pater died, felt like my legs might just give way beneath me, but now…” He shook his head slowly. “You learn to set it aside, to move past it.”

“Sounds like a ’Kent-kissing blessing to me,” Valyn replied, more bitterly than he’d intended. Just the memory of Ha Lin’s limp body as he carried her from the Hole, of the wounds running down her arms, of her hair brushing his skin, made his breath stick in his chest. “Sometimes, when I think about it too much, I feel like my muscles have torn clean off the bones, like someone snapped all the tendons and ligaments holding me together. I wish I could move past it.”

“Maybe,” Kaden replied. “And maybe it’s not real if you can toss it aside like a cracked cup.”

“Fuck real,” Valyn spat. Blood throbbed at his temples. His knuckles ached. Memories flooded over him: of Balendin laughing as he recounted Lin’s torment on the West Bluffs, of blood gushing from the knife in Salia’s neck, of Yurl groveling in front of him in the darkness, hands lopped from his arms. He would have yanked the bastard back from death, out of Ananshael’s iron grip, just so he could stab him again and again, a thousand times over, so he could split his skull open.…

Breath rasped in his lungs. Sweat streamed down his back, cold in the cold night air. Kaden was staring at him, he realized, eyes wide with confusion or concern.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Valyn?”

Valyn focused on his brother’s eyes, on his voice, vision and sound braided into a cord that was drawing him up, up from the bottom of a deep well where he had been drowning.

“I’m all right,” he said finally, voice ragged, wiping his brow with a sleeve.

“You don’t look it.”

Valyn chuckled grimly. “‘All right’ is relative.”

He started to say something more, a few more words to ease the tension, when something, the faintest sound at the very edge of hearing, brought him up short. Kaden stared at him.

“What is-”

Valyn cut him off with a raised hand. He could hear the various members of his Wing sleeping-Talal’s light snore, Gwenna’s constant shifting-he could hear the lisp of the wind over the stone, even the rumble and hiss of the waterfall as it plunged off the cliff a few hundred paces to the north. But there was something more, something else. He closed his eyes, straining for the sound. It was hard to hear past his own pulse thudding in his ears, and for a moment he thought he’d imagined it. Then it came again-a soft scuff of fabric over stone. Someone outside the window, someone climbing, quieter than the wind.

Without thinking, Valyn took Kaden by the shoulder, hauling him back into the room while putting his own body between his brother and the gaping windows. Climbing meant Kettral, and though he had no idea how they’d managed to track him through the mountains, a part of him had been prepared for this moment. He slid a blade from the sheath over his shoulder as he pushed Kaden deeper into the room, offering up a brief thanks to Hull that his brother had the good sense to move with him, to remain silent.

The scuffing was gone, but there was a strange smell on the air, the faintest hint of smoke. Not woodsmoke, not a hearth or campfire. Woodsmoke didn’t taste like that, didn’t sting the nasal passage in quite the same way. This was a different smell, more dangerous, one familiar from a thousand training missions.…

“Cover up,” Valyn shouted, shattering the night’s quiet. “Explosives incoming.”

Even as he said the words, he was dragging Kaden to the floor, then throwing his own body on top as he covered his ears with his hands. He couldn’t know what sort of munitions their attackers were lighting, but if the explosion didn’t kill them all, the first moments after would prove crucial. He wanted to be able to hear, to see. Kaden went completely still beneath him, and Valyn shifted to shield as much of his brother as possible. Something clattered to the floor behind them. He squeezed his eyes shut just before the world went white, opening them only when the initial elemental fury had passed, subsiding into a more prosaic mess of shouts and screams.

They were alive. He’d felt the blast, but no shrapnel had ripped through his flesh. He wasn’t on fire. That meant they were using smokers. Smokers and flashbangs. So they’re not trying to kill us, at least not yet. On the other hand, it wasn’t looking much like a diplomatic mission. The whole point of smokers and flashbangs was to force the foe into panic and error. Which meant the first step was not to panic, not to rush. There was time. Not much, but time.

Slowly, Valyn told himself silently. Slowly.

If he raised his head more than a foot above the floor the smoke blinded and choked him, but there was still a hand’s breadth of relatively clean air beneath the pall, and Valyn dropped back down into it. He could see his Wing’s tactical lanterns-both still lit-and the shapes of the rest of the group moving in the fickle illumination. It was hard to be sure who was who, but Valyn could pick apart the voices now-Triste screaming, Gwenna and Laith cursing, Talal and Annick nearly silent as they moved over the floor. Of their attackers, Valyn could hear nothing.

“That other Kettral Wing?” Kaden asked, shifting beside him. “The Flea?”

“Might be,” Valyn said, working the problem through from a dozen angles at the same time. The attackers hadn’t simply blown up the building, which would have been easy enough. Either they wanted prisoners or, better yet, they had seen the carnage in the mountains, had sorted through the bodies and realized what it meant.

Be on our side, Valyn prayed silently. Please, Hull, let them be on our side.

“What should-” Kaden began.

“Stay quiet,” Valyn hissed, “and get down below the smoke.”

He glanced over the room once more, counted bodies. Pyrre was missing, he realized, although where the assassin had gone, Valyn had no idea. His Wing was handling the attack as they’d been trained, staying low, crawling toward the walls in order to follow them to doors, windows, cleaner air. The problem was that whoever tossed the smokers was probably waiting at those very doors and windows, and rigging the stairs had cut off their own most obvious escape route.

The most obvious escape route, Valyn thought, checking the distance to Gwenna’s charges, but not the only one.

He patted his belt pouch for the Kettral whistles. There was no way of knowing if their birds were still in the air, but if he and his Wing could win free of the building, the ledge was large enough for a grab.

If, he reminded himself. You’re not on the ’Kent-kissing ledge, and you’ve got four people who’ve never even contemplated a grab-and-go.

It was a grim fucking position, no doubt about it, and likely to get a whole lot grimmer.

A few feet away, Triste had risen to her hands and knees. Blind with the smoke and her own confusion, she was crawling frantically but aimlessly, trying to shout but choking each time she drew a breath. It wouldn’t be long before she passed out. Worse, she might remain conscious long enough to stand and stumble out one of the low windows. Valyn started toward her, then checked himself. Prioritize. Kaden was the Emperor, which meant Valyn needed to get Kaden to safety first, even if Triste fell to her death.

He scanned the narrow space between the floor and the roiling smoke. His Wing had taken up defensive positions around the perimeter of the room-or the best positions they could manage while staying below the smoke-then drawn their blades and bows and waited. Rampuri Tan, however, was standing, moving, his feet and ankles visible. The monk was taking careful, deliberate steps toward Valyn and Kaden, the end of his strange spear sweeping the floor in front of him. The movements had none of Triste’s spasmodic terror. Valyn turned back to his Wing. Talal was waving at him silently, his face against the stone floor. When he saw Valyn looking, the leach shifted over to hand sign: No injuries. Weapons intact. Orders?

Valyn allowed himself a small smile. The initial attack had wrought plenty of chaos, but it hadn’t broken them. He still had command of his Wing and contact with Kaden. Better yet, only a few dozen heartbeats had passed since the initial assault, and they were already starting to recover. If surprise doesn’t work in four heartbeats, it’s not surprise anymore. Even better, the fact that the attackers clearly wanted someone alive-for whatever reason-severely constrained their options: no hail of arrows, no barrage of starshatters. It might be possible to talk. Worth a try, at least, though Valyn didn’t intend to count on it.

Stand by to blow charges, he signed back, indicating the section of floor that Gwenna had rigged earlier. Wait for my signal.

Talal nodded, and Gwenna crawled forward on her elbows, striking stick in her teeth.

Finally the attacker spoke.

“Valyn.” It was the Flea’s voice, gravelly and dry, pitched to carry, but with no hint of urgency or anxiety. He was on the roof, near the corner that had been torn away by the weather.

Half draw, Valyn signed to Annick. Hold fire.

She nodded and rolled into place. It was a ridiculous position to shoot from, lying on her back, head cocked to the side to breathe the clean air, bow drawn across her body, but the sniper made it look natural, easy.

“Valyn,” the Flea said again, his voice almost weary, “I just want to talk.”

Valyn held his silence. Talking was all well and good, it was what he’d hoped for, but he didn’t intend to give away his position just to have a conversation. A part of him was relieved to hear the Flea’s voice. Back on the Islands, the man had always seemed hard but fair. On the other hand, if the Wing leader was a part of the conspiracy … Valyn didn’t like to think about the possibility.

His own Wing was good enough to squeeze out of a tight place, but then, this wasn’t your garden-variety, all-fucked-up, odds-stacked-against-the-good-guys tight place. Up on that roof, no more than a dozen paces away, was the best small-team tactical commander in the world, the man who literally wrote the book on inverted rose-and-thorn scenarios, who, in his early twenties, avenged the deaths of two older Kettral Wings by assassinating Casimir Damek, who went down into Hull’s Hole every year to haul out slarn for the Trial. After Hendran himself, there was no more revered Kettral commander, and now he had the high ground and the drop on them.

So you’d best think quick, Valyn growled silently, and skip the fuckups.

“Look,” the Flea continued after a moment, “I understand that you can’t talk because you don’t want to give away your position. You’re doing everything right. Better than right, actually. I have no idea how you managed to move before we threw the smokers. You’re young, but you’re smart, and I’ll stop insulting you with stuff from the old Kettral bag of tricks and traps. We trained you not to talk, so don’t talk. Just listen.

“No one’s run screaming out the window, and aside from the girl, who stopped hacking up her own lung about a minute ago, everyone’s quiet, which means you’re belly-down, sucking up the good air.” He paused. “Speaking of that girl, you might want to move her toward a window.”

Valyn glanced over at Triste’s limp form. In the chaos he hadn’t noticed her slump to the ground. Her face was ashen, her hands curled into claws, and for the second time Valyn started to move toward her. For the second time, he stopped himself. Fainting had dropped her out of the smoke. She was breathing clean air now. There was no need to move her anywhere.

“Suit yourself,” the Flea continued after a moment, and Valyn realized that the man hadn’t dropped the tricks at all. They’d spent three whole months on this back on the Islands, learning to exploit civilian casualties, to use an adversary’s own feelings of guilt or heroism against him. He could hear Nhean Pitch’s voice twanging in his ear: If you’re going to shoot some bastard, shoot him in the stomach. Stomach wounds hurt and they kill slow. Odds are, you’ll get one of the other bastards to look after him, and that’s one less bastard you’ve got to fight. The Flea was testing him, Valyn realized, probing, systematically searching for a weakness. The trouble was, there were too many civilians to protect.

Valyn scanned the floor again, then turned to Kaden.

“Can you get out through that gate?” he hissed. “You and the monk?”

Kaden hesitated, then nodded.

“And they can’t follow you, right?”

“No.”

Valyn grinned. That was one trick the Flea wouldn’t be expecting. Even better, it meant that however things played out, Kaden would be free and clear. If Valyn could hold off the attack for just a little while longer, the Emperor would be safe. Then he could see what the Flea had to say. If the man was telling the truth, maybe they could work something out, and if not … well, at least his brother wouldn’t find himself caught in the middle of a bloodbath.

“Let’s go,” Valyn whispered, bellying forward. “We’ll grab your monk on the way.”

The Flea started in again just as they began to move.

“You can tell Annick to put the bow down,” he said. “She’s not going to hit anything from that position. The game’s up, kid. We’ve got the windows covered and the stairs, too, although Gwenna did such a nice job laying those charges that you wouldn’t be able to get down them anyway. Newt says the girl’s got real talent.”

A pause. How Rampuri Tan was still moving toward them through the smoke, Valyn had no idea, but they were fast converging on the monk’s sweeping spear. Valyn hesitated. Tan couldn’t see them through the smoke, couldn’t know that it was them, and surprising him seemed like a good way to get that blade in the belly. Valyn considered a quick takedown, but Tan didn’t seem like the sort to go down quickly. That meant talking, which meant giving away their position, but there was nothing to do but get on with it.

“Tan,” he hissed, as loudly as he dared. “I’m with Kaden. Drop down below the smoke.”

The sweeping spear paused, then the monk’s hands and face appeared a few feet away. Tan let out a long, slow breath, glanced at Kaden, then Valyn, then nodded. He’d been holding his breath, Valyn realized, probably since the smokers first dropped. It was possible, though the presence of mind involved rivaled that of Valyn’s own Wing, and they’d actually trained for this kind of shit.

“The gate,” Valyn whispered, gesturing toward the wall where it stood. “You and Kaden get through and you’ll be safe.”

The monk nodded as though that had been his plan all along.

“We’ll cover you until you’re clear,” Valyn said.

“What about you?” Kaden asked.

“Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

Or captured, or dead, he amended silently before glancing over his shoulder. His people were still in position, still awaiting orders. It was the Flea who had told him, what seemed like a lifetime ago, that it seemed like they’d make a good Wing. They’d held together; now it was his job to get them out alive.

First, Kaden, Valyn reminded himself, bellying forward once more. Then talk. If the talk didn’t work, Gwenna could blow the floor. Then they’d see who was surprised.

“Valyn,” the Flea continued after a moment. “I’ll be straight with you. I saw what happened at Ashk’lan, the slaughtered monks. We found what’s left of Yurl’s Wing and the other Aedolians spread over half the mountainside. Back on the Islands they’re naming you a traitor, but I’m not so sure. You never struck me as the traitorous type, and now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen…” He let the suggestion hang in the air a moment. “Come on out, let’s discuss this, before you do something dumb and Finn has to put an arrow through you.”

Valyn tried to weigh his response.

“Besides,” the Flea added, “you might as well talk to me now. I can hear you muttering down there.”

Valyn took a deep breath. He’d given away his position, but maybe a little conversation would buy time for Kaden. “The thing is,” he replied loudly, thinking back to the mountain pass days earlier, to the way he’d naïvely ordered his people to surrender their weapons, “trust hasn’t been working out too well for me recently.”

The Flea chuckled. “Looked like it worked out even less well for the men you were trusting.”

“Yeah, well, we got lucky.”

“Why don’t you put down your weapons, and you can tell me about it.”

Valyn tensed. He wanted to believe the man, but he’d be shipped to ’Shael before he willingly disarmed again. Right now they could still maneuver, bargain, fight. Without weapons … well, he didn’t intend to throw the dice more than he had to.

When they reached the gate, Tan started talking to Kaden.

“Picture the bird,” he began slowly.

“What?” Valyn demanded.

“It’s a mental exercise,” Kaden said quietly.

Valyn shook his head. “Fuck the fucking bird,” he spat, “and get out of here. The Flea’s all sweetness and small talk now, but he’s not going to keep talking forever.”

The older monk turned that stony gaze on Valyn. “If Kaden steps through the gate without the necessary preparation, he will cease. It cannot be rushed.”

Valyn flexed and unflexed his sword hand. He could feel his luck flexing, straining, starting to splinter with each hammering heartbeat. “How long?”

“More time, the more you talk.”

Valyn bit back a retort. He couldn’t help Kaden, but he could use the time to prepare for the coming storm. Pivoting on his stomach, he scanned the room. Pyrre’s disappearance worried him. The woman seemed to be on his side, but according to Kaden she’d already murdered one monk just for slowing things down. With any luck, the flashbangs had knocked her out a window, but luck didn’t seem to be in much supply, and Valyn didn’t like the idea of the Skullsworn prowling around where he couldn’t keep an eye on her.

But then, what’s to like?

Gwenna was gesturing toward him furiously, evidently confused by the delay. Annick held her position like a statue while Talal and Laith had split up, moving to opposite walls. Stand by.… Valyn signed. Blowing the floor was a way out, but a risky one. As long as the Flea was still trying to negotiate, there was still a chance they’d all walk away without violence. As long as he stayed on the ’Kent-kissing roof.

“I’m not ordering my people to disarm,” Valyn said. “That’s something else you taught me. But I don’t mind talking. You keep your people up there. I’ll keep my people down here. Very civilized.”

“Works for me,” the Flea replied.

“Now,” Tan murmured to Kaden, “when the bird has flown from sight, fill your mind with the sky and step through the gate.”

Valyn risked a glance over his shoulder to see Kaden’s eyes, only a foot away but somehow impossibly distant, bright as coals from the forge, cold as the stars. His brother nodded once, then rose to his feet, disappearing into the smoke. It was only a step to the wall and then he was gone.

“Did it work?” Valyn hissed at the other monk. “Did he make it?”

“I will know when I reach the other side,” Tan replied, then closed his own eyes, evidently in preparation.

Across the room Triste was stirring. Valyn still hadn’t figured out how to handle her. He tried to run through the options. She was small, light enough to carry, but that would slow him down considerably. They could leave her to the Flea, use her as a diversion. She raised her head slowly, eyes baffled and full of fear. Valyn was about to motion to her to stay low, to keep quiet, when a pair of black boots hit the floor behind her.

“Company!” Laith shouted. “North window!”

Triste turned, screamed, then lunged to her feet, plunging through the smoke directly toward Valyn and Tan. She passed by coughing, flailing, close enough that Valyn was able to put out a hand, to feel the cloth of her borrowed uniform pass between his fingers. Then, suddenly, she was gone.

The gate, Valyn realized, ice in his stomach. She went through the gate, and with none of Kaden’s preparation.

“She’s gone,” Tan said. If he felt at all sorry for the girl’s annihilation, he didn’t show it. “See to your own.”

Then the monk rose into the smoke, stepped forward, and vanished.

Gone. The two monks and Triste. The Emperor was safe.

Valyn spun back to face the attacker. So all the Flea’s offers of talk had been bullshit, a ruse. Valyn drew his second blade, ready to hurl himself at the attacker, then paused. There was something about those boots; Pyrre’s boots.

“Wait, Gwenna,” he shouted, rolling away from the gate. “They’re not…”

Too late. The charges were already exploding, sharp cracks followed by the deafening rumble of stone folding in on itself. Valyn took a bearing on the location of the hole, cursing to himself as he slid into a crouch, readying himself to jump as soon as the rumbling ceased. If they’d had any hope of talking their way free, it was over now, or as good as. The only thing now was to get out, to get clear.

Only, the rumbling didn’t stop. The whole building was shuddering beneath him now, stone falling from the ceiling at the same time as the floor dropped away. He couldn’t see a ’Kent-kissing thing, shrouded as he was in smoke, but he could hear the structure protesting. He took a tentative step backward, away from the source of the explosion, and then, with a sickening lurch, the stone beneath his feet gave way.