The Providence of Fire (22 page)

“Tal Amen?”
Triste said finally. “No.
Tal Amein
.”

Kaden shook his head.

“The Still … Self?” she translated, squinting as she did so. “The Missing Heart?”

“The Dead Heart,” Tan said finally.

Fear slicked a chill finger along Kaden's spine. The arch looked like the rest of the arches: slender, still, almost inviting. Through the open space he could see the black-tailed seabirds darting into the waves, sunlight shattering off the broken panes of the sea. There was no telling what lay on the other side, but Tan's translation promised something less inviting than this lost island.

“The Dead Heart,” Kaden said, trying out the words. “What is it?”

“It is dark,” Tan said. “And cold. Hold your breath as you step through the
kenta.
”

“Who goes first?”

“She does.” The monk nudged Triste forward with his
naczal
. “If the guards decide to loose their shafts, better her chest for the broadheads.”

 

11

The Flea was waiting.

Even as Valyn rolled to his feet, shielding his head with one hand from the rubble still raining down from above, retrieving with the other the blade he had tossed away from himself while falling, even as he scanned the room for his Wing through the kicked-up haze of smoke and stone dust, even as he tried to slow the hammering in his chest, to see the scene clearly, to fucking
think,
he knew something was wrong.

It's too bright,
he realized, squinting about him, flexing his left elbow, which felt badly bruised but not broken.
It's lit
.

The realization punched him in the gut. He had fallen from near total darkness into a chamber hung with lanterns. Even in the smoke, he could see Talal lurching to his feet across the room, see Laith pressing a hand against the side of his head. The flier's twin blades lay on the ground just a pace away, but a pace, in a tight spot like this, might as well have been a mile. Gwenna had made the jump, too, and Annick, all according to plan, and yet, as Valyn's eyes adjusted to the light, his stomach soured further. The light came from Kettral lanterns, tactical lanterns almost identical to his own, three spread around the perimeter of the room.

He squinted.

His Wing was not alone. There were other figures in Kettral black, figures Valyn recognized all too well from his long years on the Islands, men and women with blades out and bows drawn, arrows trained on his chest.

“Just stop, Valyn, before someone gets hurt.”

The Flea's voice, again, although this time it was coming, not from above, but from one of the exterior windows. A moment later, the Wing leader stepped through, down into the room, nodding as he surveyed the rubble.

“Rigging the floor was smart,” he said. “Risky, but smart.”

“A man who takes no risk will rot,” the Aphorist observed.

The Flea's demolitions master, a short, ugly man with a long, ugly beard and bright eyes, slouched against a doorway on the far side of the room, flatbow pointed at Gwenna. “Valyn was right to trust the girl. She knows her work.”

“Fuck off, Newt,” Gwenna snarled at him. She had sheathed her swords before blowing the floor, and crouched empty-handed, eyes fixed on the Aphorist. “I'll bugger your ugly ass with a starshatter before this is over.”

A few paces away Sigrid sa'Karnya made a harsh rattling noise deep in her throat. Despite her pale skin, the Flea's leach was the most beautiful soldier on the Islands, a stunning blond woman from the northern coast of Vash, but the priests of Meshkent had cut out her tongue years earlier, and aside from hand sign, the only language remaining to her was a set of guttural hacks and scrapings.

“My gorgeous friend here,” the Aphorist translated affably, “takes issue with your language.”

“Tell your gorgeous friend that I'll go to work on her next,” Gwenna spat.

Sigrid didn't respond. She just fixed the younger woman with those bright blue eyes and dragged the tip of her belt knife—the only weapon she had bothered to draw—along the inside of her own arm. A line of dark blood welled up behind the steel. She pointed the blade, still dripping, at Gwenna's throat. Gwenna wasn't afraid of much, but Valyn saw her swallow heavily. Back at the Eyrie, Sigrid's reputation for beauty was matched only by the stories of her cruelty, and though the Flea had been a fair, if demanding trainer, the rumors surrounding his Wing were much darker.

“How did you know?” Valyn coughed. His head throbbed, and he could taste blood, hot and bitter on the back of his tongue. He felt the dark anger rising inside him, anger at Gwenna for blowing the floor before his order. Anger at himself for failing to outthink the Flea. Jaw clenched, he waited for the wave of fury to pass. No one was dead. That was the important part. Despite the explosion, despite all the drawn steel, no one was dead. There was still time to talk, to negotiate. It was still possible the Flea wasn't trying to kill them at all, that they could work something out. Valyn just needed to keep the arrows from flying a little bit longer. “How'd you know we were going to blow the floor?”

The Flea shook his head. “We've been doing this a long time, Valyn.” He sounded weary rather than triumphant. “You did well, with the camp and the escape. Against a lot of other Wings, you'd be free now, and we'd be cursing as we dusted off our blacks.”

Valyn smiled bleakly. “But we're not up against the other Wings.”

The Flea shrugged. “Like I said, we've been doing this a long time.” He gestured toward Annick. “Now tell your sniper to put down her bow. Then we can talk.”

Aside from Valyn's own drawn blade, Annick was the only one who had managed to bring a weapon to bear: her string was drawn, the arrow's point fixed on the Flea. If it bothered the other Wing's commander to stand a finger's twitch from death, he didn't show it. His lined face didn't show much of anything.

There were plenty of vets back on the Islands who looked like Kettral from their boots to their brains, all muscle and jaw. Not the Flea. Short and dark, middle-aged and pockmarked, with gray hair hazing his scalp, he'd always looked to Valyn more like a farmer stomping in after a long day in the fields than the most successful Wing commander in the history of the Eyrie.

“We shouldn't disarm,” Annick said. “Not after last time.”

“I wasn't there last time,” Blackfeather Finn interjected in his deep, urbane baritone, “but a precise observer would be obliged to note that you're not exactly
armed
in this situation.” The Flea's sniper sat reclining against the doorframe, flatbow cradled in the crook of his arm. He might have been the Flea's opposite—tall, olive-skinned, clean somehow despite the rigors of the mission, and almost preposterously handsome. He smiled apologetically, teeth white in the lamplight. “Annick and Valyn are the only ones actually holding weapons—for which I commend them—and even Valyn is missing one of his blades.”

“Who else is here?” Valyn asked, ignoring the sniper, trying to see the whole picture, to formulate some kind of plan. “What other Wings?”

“There's a few looking,” the Flea acknowledged, “but this is a big range of mountains. Guess we're the only ones that found you.”

So it was five against five if it came to a fight. The sudden brightness of the lanterns dazzled, and Valyn squinted, trying to make sense of the room. No sign of Chi Hoai Mi, the Flea's flier. So five on four, maybe, giving Valyn's Wing the numbers, not that the numbers were worth a steaming pile of shit, not when you were pinned down and exposed. Not when you were fighting other Kettral.

Slow down,
Valyn reminded himself
. No one's fighting yet.

The Flea sucked something out of his teeth and nodded toward Annick again. “So. About putting down that bow…”

“You understand,” Valyn said, studying the other Wing leader for any hint of his intentions, “that it's a risk. You've got the drop on us as it is. If you're lying…” He shook his head. “You're asking me to take an awful chance. To put my Wing in danger.”

The Flea pursed his lips as though considering this. “Thing is,” he replied finally, “there are the chances you take because you want to, and those you take because you have to.”

The Aphorist nodded. “Seeing a door is not the same as unlocking it.”

“And please,” the Flea went on, “tell Talal not to do anything dumb. Usually, we'd knock out a leach right away, but I've left him conscious as a courtesy. A gesture of good faith. We all know what he's capable of, and if he gets twitchy, someone's going to have to shoot him.”

Talal met Valyn's eyes. Sweat glistened on his bare scalp. Though the night was cool, Valyn's own blacks were likewise drenched, and his heart battered at his ribs. Kettral lore was filled with stories of Wing commanders in similar situations—outmaneuvered, overmatched, caught wrong-footed—who somehow managed to string together a series of desperate gambits to save their Wing. Only, Valyn was all out of gambits.

Any action, any attack, could only end in defeat and death. Even Annick's arrow, so carefully trained on the Flea, would probably be swatted down by Sigrid's strange powers before it left the bow. Valyn hated disarming, but, as the Flea said, you took some chances because you had no other choice. His elbow throbbed and his head ached. His throat felt too dry to speak, but the words came out clearly enough.

“Stand down. Talal, Annick, everyone just stand down.”

Annick hesitated a moment, then lowered her bow. Talal looked relieved.

“Sometimes,” Newt said, nodding in approval, “it is the fool who fights, and the fighter who folds.”

The Flea ignored him.

“Where's the other one?” the Wing leader asked, “the woman with the knives?”

Valyn shook his head. “I'm not sure.” He hadn't seen the Skullsworn since her boots had sent Triste running panicked through the gate and caused Gwenna to blow the floor. She should have fallen, just the same as everyone else, but Valyn could see no sign of her.

“‘Not sure' makes me nervous,” the Flea said, flicking a sign toward Blackfeather Finn.

“She makes me nervous, too,” Valyn replied. “She's not with us.”

“Sure looks like she's with you. Don't lie to me, Valyn. We've been watching. We know about the monks, about the girl. Where are they, all of them?”

Valyn hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. According to Tan, no one else could pass through the gate. Kaden was free. Safe. At least, that was the theory. Valyn couldn't see any reason to put it to the test before he had to.

“I'm not sure where they are,” he said again.

The Flea's lips tightened. His fingers darted through another two or three signs. Valyn didn't recognize them.

“You're playing games, Valyn,” the Flea said, “and there's too much steel out for games.”

Sigrid and the Aphorist shifted to cover Finn's position as the sniper rose to his feet. Flatbow leveled, he stepped into the dark hallway beyond the doorframe, paused, then groaned.

“What?” the Flea asked.

Finn turned back, his mouth open, gestured with one hand—a graceful, florid little motion, as though he were getting ready to take a bow—to the hilt of a knife plunged in his chest. He stood there a moment, blood flecking his lips, then fell. The Flea was shouting orders before the body hit the floor.

“
Burn
it, Sig. Newt—get hunting!”

For half a heartbeat Valyn just stared at the body. Two things were clear: Pyrre had killed Finn, and no one had killed Valyn himself. Before he could think it through further, a series of detonations rocked the hallway. The empty doorframe, murky black a moment earlier, erupted in a fog of blue flame. Sigrid's work, Valyn realized, a leach's kenning rather than munitions. If Pyrre was out there, she was dead now, but Newt darted through the fire anyway, blades drawn, while Sigrid flicked a dismissive hand at Annick and Talal. They reeled as though struck, the sniper's arrow careening off through an open window as she struggled to keep hold of her bow.

The Flea's Wing was fully in motion, and Valyn hadn't moved. None of his Wing had. He shifted his weight, stepping backward to create space just as the Flea attacked. Valyn knocked aside the first blow, parried the second, slid under the third, the man's double blades raining down in a series of forms too fast for Valyn's mind to follow. He abandoned thought, letting his body do the work it had been trained for, that the Flea had trained him for, parrying and slicing, stabbing and riposting, lunging and countering … and then it was over, fast as it had begun, his own sword forced wide by one of the Flea's blades, the soldier's other steel pressed against his neck.

“I didn't know…” Valyn said.

The Flea shook his head, eyes hard. “You killed Finn.”

Valyn glanced over his shoulder toward the sniper's crumpled form. “Pyrre—” he began.

“Save it,” the Flea cut in. “We're done talking.”

Valyn stared. It was a hopeless position. Beyond hopeless. The Flea could slice his throat with the barest twitch of his wrist. The fight was over; it had been over from the beginning, really. Only … Valyn's mind scrambled for purchase on the situation. The Flea hadn't killed him.
No
one had killed him. Despite the madness unfolding all around, his entire Wing was still shouting, fighting. Which meant the Flea wanted to take them alive. It was a slender thread to hang his own life from, but Valyn had nothing else. He took a deep breath, raised his hands as though in surrender, then, with a roar, half fear, half fury, he lunged forward, directly into the sword's bright point, tipping his head back to bare his neck more fully.

For half a blink he thought he'd fucked up and badly, killed himself on the other man's blade, but the Flea was as fast as Valyn had hoped. The Wing leader cursed, yanking his weapon awkwardly aside, and Valyn seized the advantage, bulling directly ahead, knocking the man hard into the wall, gaining just enough space to pull free and bring his own weapon to bear once more.