The Providence of Fire (13 page)

A long moment passed, heartbeat after hammering heartbeat. Then Orren spat into the mud, his thick face twisted with anger and fear.

“Ah,
fuck
this,” he muttered, shaking his head, turning back toward the bridge.

Willet hesitated a moment, then wheeled to face Adare, shoving her viciously back into the mud.

“Ya miserable cunt,” he snarled. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he fled in the wake of his companion.

Lehav considered her where she lay sprawled in the mud. He made no move to help her up.

“Thank you,” Adare said, forcing herself to her knees, then hauling herself out of the filth, wiping her hands ineffectually on her dress. “In the name of the goddess, thank you.”

“If you are lying,” the soldier replied, “if you are not a pilgrim, if you have used Intarra's sacred name for your own advantage, I will take your coin myself and make a special trip on my way out of the city, a trip right back to this very spot, to leave you for Willet and Orren.”

 

6

The bones spoke clearly enough. Skeletons littered the wide hallways and narrow rooms of the orphanage, skeletons of children, hundreds and hundreds, some on the cusp of adulthood, others no more than infants, their ribs narrower than Kaden's fingers. The grinding passage of years had dismembered most, but enough of the tiny forms remained intact—huddled in corners, collapsed in hallways, clutching one another beneath the stairs—to speak of some horror sweeping down upon them, sudden and unimagined.

Kaden had tried to ask Tan about the city, but Valyn was pushing hard for them to get upstairs, and the older monk, after the strange diversion at the entrance, seemed just as determined to reach the topmost floor and the
kenta
that waited there. When Kaden posed a question as they climbed, Tan had turned that implacable glare upon him.

“Focus on the present,” he'd said, “or join the past.”

Kaden tried to follow the advice as they mounted the stairs, tried to watch for hidden dangers and unexpected threats, to float on the moment like a leaf on a stream, but his eyes kept drifting back to the skeletons.

Half-remembered stories of the Atmani bubbled up in his mind, of the bright empire founded by the leach-lords, then shattered by their insanity and greed. According to the tales, they had razed entire cities as they descended into madness, but if Kaden's childhood memories served, their empire had been almost entirely confined to Eridroa. It hadn't come within a thousand miles of the Bone Mountains, and besides, the Atmani had ruled millennia after the Csestriim. He stepped over another sprawled skeleton, staring at the tiny, grasping hands.

It could have been a sickness,
he told himself,
some sort of plague
.

Only, victims of plague did not retreat into closets or try to barricade doors. Victims of plague did not have their small skulls hacked in two. The bones were ancient, but as Kaden stepped over skeleton after skeleton, he could read the story. There had been no attempt to move the bodies, no effort to lay them out for burning and burial as one would expect if anyone had survived the slaughter. Even across the still chasm of time, he could read the shock and panic of the dead.

The memory of Pater filled his mind, of the small boy held aloft in Ut's armored fist, calling out for Kaden to flee even as the Aedolian's broadblade cut the life from him. Kaden's jaw ached, and he realized he was clenching it. He drained the tension into his lungs, breathed it out with his next breath, and replaced the awful image of Pater's death with memories of the boy as he had been in life—darting through the rocks around Ashk'lan's refectory, diving into Umber's Pool and coming up sputtering. He allowed the scenes to play across his memory for a while, then extinguished them, returning his attention to the flickering light of the lantern where it slid across the crumbling walls and brittle bones.

Fortunately, Valyn and Tan agreed on their ultimate destination—the top floor of the orphanage—though they had different reasons for their urgency. Valyn seemed to think it would make for the best defensive position, but it was also, according to the monk, where they would find the
kenta
. Kaden didn't much care why they agreed just so long as he didn't have to pull on his imperial mantle to adjudicate another dispute. He was exhausted—exhausted from running, from fighting, from flying, and something about this dead city weighed on him. He was curious about the
kenta,
curious about whatever history Tan finally decided to provide for the place, but at the moment he was content to stump along behind as they wound their way up the wide staircase.

The four members of Valyn's Wing caught up with them in the central corridor of the topmost story. All had weapons drawn.

“Threats?” Valyn asked, glancing over his shoulder. There was something tight and urgent in his voice.

“Depends what you mean by ‘threat,'” the flier replied. Laith reminded Kaden of Akiil—the irreverence, even the grin. “I saw a rat the size of Annick. Not that Annick's very big, but still…”

“The whole place is about to fall over,” Gwenna said, cutting through Laith's words.

“Tonight?” Valyn asked.

She scowled, though whether at Valyn or the building itself, Kaden couldn't say. “Probably not tonight,” she conceded finally.

“Provided no one jumps up and down,” Laith added.

“Or descends the stairs,” the Wing's leach added.

“What's wrong with the stairs?” Kaden asked.

“I rigged the last flight on the way up,” Gwenna replied, smiling grimly. “Two flickwicks and a modified starshatter. Anything tries to come up, we're going to need a broom to sweep up what's left of the bodies.”

“Was that wise?” Kaden asked, glancing around at the gaping cracks in the masonry.

“Look…” Gwenna began, raising a finger.

“Gwenna,” Valyn growled. “You are speaking to the Emperor.”

For a moment it seemed as though the girl was going to bull ahead despite the warning, but finally she pulled back the accusatory finger, twisting the gesture into a half salute. “Well, tell the
Emperor,
” she said, turning to Valyn, “that if he'll manage the emperoring, I'll take care of the demolitions.”

Valyn tensed, but Kaden put a hand on his shoulder. It was hard to know just how fiercely to assert his new title and authority. Clearly, he would never convince Annur of his legitimacy if a handful of soldiers led by his own brother treated him with contempt. On the other hand, he was, aside from Triste, the least capable member of their small group. The fact galled him, but it was there all the same. Before people saw him as an emperor, he would have to act as an emperor. He had little enough idea how to manage that, but it didn't seem as though pitching a fit in a hallway would be a step in the right direction.

“You have a deal,” he said, nodding to Gwenna. “I'll stay out of your way, but maybe when we're settled you could explain something about your munitions; normally I'd stick to emperoring, but there doesn't seem to be all that much here that needs my attention.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, as though she suspected a joke, but when Kaden held her gaze she finally snorted something that might have been a laugh.

“I can show you something,” she said. “Enough you don't blow us all up. You couldn't be much worse at it than your brother,” she added, jerking her head at Valyn.

Kaden smiled.

“Thanks for the confidence, Gwenna,” Valyn said. “Anything else to report from down below? Anything moving?”

“Aside from Annick's rat sibling?” Laith replied. “Not a thing.”

Valyn's shoulders relaxed fractionally.

“All right. Everyone to the front of the building except Laith. You check all the empty rooms on this floor.”

“For more rats?” the flier asked.

“Yes,” Valyn replied, voice hardening. “For more rats.”

*   *   *

The room fronting the top story was larger than the rest, spanning the full width of the building and opening through several tall windows out onto the night. Wide hearths stood at either end, though they were choked by debris that had fallen from the chimneys above, plaster and chunks of stone spilling out onto the floor. Wind and weather had torn away a corner of the roof—Kaden could make out the great sweep of the cliff a few paces above—and night air gusted through the gap, chill and sharp.

For a moment he stared around in perplexity, searching for the
kenta
. He had formed an image in his head of something massive, grand, like the Godsgate of the Dawn Palace—marble, maybe, or polished bloodstone, or onyx—but nothing massive or magnificent waited in the middle of the room. He squinted in the meager lamplight. Nothing at
all
stood in the middle of the room.

“Talal,” Valyn said, gesturing curtly, “center window. I want eyes on the ledge before full dark. Gwenna, see what you can do about rigging a chunk of this floor to drop out.”

“I could
kick
a hole in the 'Kent-kissing floor,” the woman replied, digging at the crumbling mortar with her boot, “and you want me to rig it? I seem to remember someone back at the Eyrie teaching us something about not sleeping on top of our own explosives.”

Valyn turned to face his demolitions master. His jaw was tight, but his voice level when he responded. “And I remember something about having two ways out of any defensive position. You rigged the stairs, which keeps the bad guys out, which is good. It also keeps us
in,
which is less good.”

“If they can't get in, why do we need to get out?”

“Gwenna,” Valyn said, pointing at the floor, “just do it. If you blow us all up, I'll make sure I don't die until you have a chance to punch me.”

“Yes, Oh Light of the Empire,” she said, bowing to Valyn as she yanked the charges out of her pack. “At once, My Noble Leader.” The words were sharp, but Kaden noticed some of the acid had gone out of her challenge. The whole thing sounded like sparring now, rather than actual fighting.

Valyn shook his head. “You can't pull that shit anymore, Gwenna,” he said, jerking a thumb at Kaden. “He's the Light of the Empire. We're just here to make sure no one puts him out. Speaking of which,” he went on, turning to Tan and spreading his hands, “where's the gate?”

Tan gestured toward the wall. Kaden squinted, then took a few steps closer. The
kenta
was there, he realized, almost as tall as the ceiling, but built, if built was the right word, flush with the masonry behind it. The arch was surprisingly slender, no more than a hand's width in diameter, and made of something Kaden had never seen, a smooth gray substance that might have been part steel, part stone. The graceful span looked spun rather than carved, and the light came off of it strangely, as though it were illuminated, not by Valyn's lantern, but some other, invisible source.

“What is the point,” Valyn asked, “of building a gate right into a wall?”

“The other side is not the wall,” Tan replied. “It is not here.”

“That clarifies a lot,” Valyn said, stooping to pick up a chunk of stone. He bounced it on his hand a few times, then tossed it underhand toward the
kenta
. It flipped lazily end over end and then, just as it passed beneath the arch … ceased.

Kaden could think of no other word to describe the passage. There was no splash, no echo, no sudden winking out. He knew what to expect, but some part of his mind, something deeper and older than rational thought, quailed at the sight of something, a hard, real part of the world, becoming nothing.

If Valyn was discomfited, he didn't show it. “Looks like it works.”

Tan ignored him. He had acquired a lantern of his own from one of the Kettral, and was holding it aloft, running a finger along the outside of the arch slowly, as though searching for cracks.

“Where did it go?” Valyn asked.

“Nowhere,” the older monk replied.

“How useful.”

“The Blank God claimed it,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “The stone is nothing now, nowhere.”
And pretty soon,
he reminded himself silently, a chill spreading through him,
I'm going to be following that stone.

“What would happen if I jumped in?”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn't sound so bad.”

“Then you fail to appreciate nothingness,” Tan replied, straightening from his examination of the ground in front of the gate. “It is clean on this side.”

“Clean?” Kaden asked.

The monk turned to him. “Like all gates, the
kenta
can be blocked or barbed. Since those of us who step through are forced to step through blind, there is a danger.”

“Ambush,” Valyn said, nodding. “Makes sense. You want to set a trap, you do it at a choke point.”

“But who would be setting traps?” Kaden asked. “Only a few people even know they exist.”

“Few is not none,” Tan replied, turning to the gate. “I will check the other side.”

“Is that safe?” Valyn asked, shaking his head.

“No. But it is necessary. If I do not return before the Bear Star rises, the
kenta
is compromised. Abandon this course, and quickly.”

Kaden nodded. He wanted to ask more, about the gates, the traps, about the strange city in which they found themselves, a city that appeared on no maps, but Tan's eyes had already emptied, and before Kaden could speak, the older monk was stepping through the
kenta
.

For a few heartbeats after he disappeared no one spoke. Wind whipped through the holes in the ceiling, chasing dust and dirt across the uneven floor. Kaden stared at the gate, forcing his heart to beat slowly, steadily.