The Providence of Fire (36 page)

Balendin just raised his brows, his bonds not permitting much else. “I see that you're not getting along with our hosts any better than I am. I guess that means we're on the same side. Again.” He started to smile, then grimaced as his lip cracked open, bleeding anew.

“We were never on the same side,” Valyn said. Despite the cold, his skin blazed. His skin and his blood. Even the breath in his lungs seemed to burn. Like Gwenna, he'd nearly forgotten the surrounding horsemen. Whatever the Urghul were, whatever they were planning, this was the man who had murdered Amie and Ha Lin, who had come so close to murdering Kaden. Everything—their flight from the Eyrie, the Flea's pursuit and Finn's death, even their current captivity—could be traced right back to Balendin Ainhoa. Had Valyn not been so tightly bound, he would have leapt on the leach, would have wrung the life from his flesh. “We were never on the same side,” he said again. “And we never will be.”

He tried to collar his anger, to choke it back. Fury so blind and unreasoning was dangerous in any situation; around Balendin it was deadly. Valyn wasn't likely to forget their last fight, that desperate night battle high in the Bone Mountains, Balendin knocking aside Annick's arrows with the tiniest flick of his fingers, Balendin sending stones hurling through the darkness, Balendin chuckling smugly, knowing that as long as Valyn hated him, he would have power. All leaches were strange, unnatural creatures, but there was a world of difference between Talal, who relied on iron for his strength, and Balendin, who fed off the emotions of his foes. Balendin needed the fear and the rage, cultivated them, and while Valyn could, for the most part, master his fear of the leach, the rage was another matter entirely. Clearly the Urghul had drugged Balendin in the same way they had Talal. Had they not, the vicious bastard would already have gutted them all.

Balendin pursed his lips. “You've always had a hard time with compromise, Valyn. It's a shame, particularly now. I could use an ally.” He cocked his head to the side. “And from the look of it, so could you.”

Before Valyn could reply, one of the
taabe
slammed a spear shaft into the backs of his knees, dropping him into the mud.

“Talk less,” the rider said, dismounting with obvious distaste, then tying Valyn in the same uncomfortable manner as Balendin.

Valyn tried to reply, but the Urghul cuffed him across the cheek.

“Talk less.”

Balendin smirked as Valyn's Wing was bound. “Well, just think about it, Valyn. I know we've had our differences, but…” He shrugged, the movement cut short by his cords, “I think we could get past all that.”

 

17

Over and over, day after day, like the chorus to a desperate song, the words revolved in Adare's mind:
It can't be true. It can't be true. It can't be true
. When the song stopped, however, when the tune fell off, she heard a different voice, cold and rational:
Yes. It can
.

The history of the Atmani was ancient, to be sure, but though the wounds to the cities and land had long healed, the scars remained. Certainly, the accounts were fresh enough. Adare had read dozens of them as a child, tales penned by people who were there, who saw what happened. The chronicles didn't agree on much, but the basics were clear: the Atmani kings and queens, six immortal leach-lords, ruled Eridroa well and justly for close to five hundred years. Then they went mad.

When three decades of civil war were finally over, they had destroyed half the world in fire, famine, and war. It was true that Roshin and Rishinira hadn't been quite as brutal as the others, disappearing entirely before the last spasms of slaughter began, but that didn't mean much. If Nira and Oshi were the last of the leach-lords, they had the blood of thousands on their hands, tens of thousands. It was almost impossible to believe, but Adare had seen the hovering net of flame, had heard Oshi's ranting. He'd been ready to kill her, to murder her for destroying a tower that had collapsed centuries earlier.

Adare glanced over at the old man. He sat on the bank of the canal, on a wide, flat stone where Nira had put him while they ate their lunch, comfortably away from the other pilgrims. Since the terrifying scene in the old tower, he had returned to his quiet, gentle madness, but Nira never let him wander from her sight. She was always there with the bottle when he grew puzzled or distressed, helping him to tip it up while the pungent spirits dribbled down his chin. There were dozens of bottles of the stuff clinking softly in the bottom of the wagon. What it was, Adare still had no idea, but it seemed to work. At the moment Oshi was gazing down the steep bank, singing a soft, incomprehensible song to the rising carp.

And Nira … Adare studied her surreptitiously while she ate a small bowl of cold rice. While it was true that the old woman had proven helpful, even kind, in her brusque way, since the scene by the canal she had become more guarded, her eyes more dangerous. She understood as well as Adare that the balance of power had shifted between the two of them, and it was clear she didn't appreciate the shift. Nira had redoubled her lashings, both verbal and physical, as though newly determined to teach the young woman a lesson, any lesson.

“Look,” Adare said finally, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “I appreciate your hiding me these past weeks, but things have changed.”

Nira's eyes narrowed.

“Don't seem that different to me.”

“They don't?” Adare asked, trying not to raise her voice, shooting a nervous glance at Oshi. “Have you forgotten the other night? Forgotten what I saw?”

“Don't see that it matters.”

Adare exhaled slowly. “Yes. Well. I do.” She leaned in. “I know who you are. You've kept my secret, and I appreciate that, but traveling with you is an enormous risk.…”

“Being a princess disguised as a pilgrim is a risk.”

Adare nodded vigorously. “Which is why I don't need any
more
.” She took a deep breath, trying to slow herself. “The other pilgrims already distrust you. You heard Lehav the other night. I think it might just be best if we went our separate ways.”

Nira frowned, then shook her head. “Don't think so.”

Adare stared. “You don't think so?”

“Think we'll keep on as we've been.”

“No,” Adare said, the fear rising up inside her. “You're not listening. I will find other companions.”

“And have me wonderin' every day if you sold us for a bit a' trust from yer newfound friends?”

Adare shook her head. “I wouldn't do that. Never. Besides, if I went to the pilgrims claiming that Roshin and Rishinira are just over there, cooking fish by the wagon, who would believe me? People would think I'd lost my mind.”

“They might not believe the Atmani part,” Nira said grimly, “but it don't take much talk a' leaches to see a couple old fools strung twitchin' from a tree.”

“I wouldn't do that,” Adare insisted again.

Nira smiled a toothy smile. “I know. B'cause you'll be right here with us till the long walk's over.”

Adare took a deep breath, gathering her nerve. The woman and her brother were leaches, they could kill her with a gesture, but the three of them sat in plain sight of the rest of the pilgrims, barely a hundred paces of untilled field between them. Surely Nira wouldn't be bold enough to attack Adare where the others might see, might notice. Adare tried to believe that as she leaned forward once more.

“This is not a negotiation,” she said firmly. “It is a fact.”

Nira rounded on her snake-quick, snapping the side of her cane into Adare's temple, knocking her a few paces down the steep embankment. For a few heartbeats Adare fought the throbbing pain and the rising darkness. Finally she was able to struggle to her knees, then her feet. At last, holding her skull, she looked up to find the old woman shaking her head, a quick, curt motion, lips tight.

“I understand you're a princess and all,” Nira hissed. “You're bright. You're ambitious. You've won a few petty little battles.…”

“Petty battles?” Adare demanded, trying to get her feet beneath her. To show weakness now was to fail, and she could not afford to fail. “I saw the Chief Priest of Intarra destroyed. I gelded his entire Church.”

Nira snorted. “A batch of sun-blind fools.”

Adare wasn't sure how to respond to that, but the woman was already bulling ahead. “You've been a minister a few months. I ruled this whole fucking continent”—she paused to stab her cane into the soft earth—“for centuries. You had a quarrel with a priest? We,” she included Oshi in her gesture, “battled Dirik and Chirug for
decades.
I faced Shihjahin on the black rock for three nights and three days while the earth cracked around us and men died by the thousands.”

Her lips were drawn back in a snarl. Adare felt a cold hand close around her heart.

“I saw your family rise from nothing, watched Terial struggle to found his little empire, scraping together our ashes and calling them a civilization. I saw Terial die. And Santun, and Anlatun—
all
of them. Missed your father's funeral tendin' ta Oshi's cough, but make no mistake about it girl, when the time comes, I will see
you
stuck in one a' those caves, bony hands folded on your chest. So if you think, you presumptuous little bitch, that because you are a fucking Malkeenian, a princess, a clever girl in a stupid world, think this: for a thousand years and more I have refrained from using my powers. For a thousand years I have kept my brother from destroying everything he sees. I
hope
to continue doing so until I've done what I intend to do, and if you'd seen what my brother is capable of, my hopes would be your fucking prayers.”

She shook her head, and some of the fury had drained from her voice when she spoke again. “Our fight is not with you, girl, but if you cross me, you'll wish it had been you and not that useless priest who burned in Intarra's fire.”

When the woman finally fell silent, Adare realized she had taken two or three steps back, as though driven bodily by the force of Nira's fury.

“Sister?” Oshi asked, looking up from the carp, worry and confusion in his cloudy eyes. One hand opened and closed as though attempting a fist. “Is there danger?” He glanced at Adare uncertainly, then at the land around them, eyes fixing on the pilgrims atop the bank. “Must we fight?”

Nira shifted her eyes from Adare to her brother, then back.

“Ask her,” she said.

Adare hesitated, fear, humiliation, and awe raging high inside her like a river about to burst its banks. She wanted to lash out, to physically strike the old woman. She wanted to whimper. There wasn't much space left over for rational thought, but it was to that remaining sliver of her mind that her father's voice spoke from the depth of her childhood.
You cannot see clearly, Adare, when your sight is clouded by your own emotions
.

She took an unsteady breath, then another. Rishinira was a leach, an abomination, one of the twisted vipers responsible for the deaths of thousands, but not, at least not necessarily, Adare's enemy. Her mind spun, trying to see the truth. The old woman had helped her, hidden her, protected her, and asked for nothing in return except Adare's complicity.

“No,” Adare said slowly, raising her hands. “I don't want a fight.”

Nira studied her for a long time, then nodded brusquely. “All right then. When we've got to Olon and done what needs doin' there, ya won't see us again. We'll disappear.” She glanced at her brother. “We're good at that, ain't we, ya stupid sack a' shit?”

Adare frowned. She had spent so much time worrying about how to handle Nira and her brother that she never paused to wonder
why
the two had joined the pilgrimage in the first place. It seemed an unlikely decision. Travel involved unexpected surprises. Joining a large group increased the chance of awkward questions, prying glances, inadvertent disclosures. Adare's own nerves were frayed ragged from two weeks maintaining her disguise, and yet, for some reason, the two Atmani had sought out the company, willingly attaching themselves to the other pilgrims for the long march south.

“And what,” Adare asked slowly, “are you doing on the road to Olon?”

Nira eyed her warily. “Didn't we just get done pissin' on each other over the keepin' a' secrets? Now you want ta go sharing more?”

Adare paused. It would be easy to let it go, to leave the conversation on a note of uneasy détente and turn her attention to the challenges awaiting her to the south. There were enough dangerous people hoping to see her dead without adding the 'Kent-kissing Atmani to the list. On the other hand, Nira's presence in the pilgrimage seemed too strange to be utter coincidence, as though she, too, were swept south on the same unsettled political tide that carried Adare. It was hard to imagine what an immortal leach might want with a crumbling city like Olon, but there was a chance that her unspoken goals coincided in some way with Adare's. Unfortunately, the trading of secrets involved trading.

Don't give,
Adare thought grimly,
don't get.

“I'm raising an army,” Adare said. “That's why I'm going to Olon.”

Nira pursed her wrinkled lips. “S'wrong with the four ya already got?”

“They aren't mine,” Adare replied.

“Annurian armies. Annurian princess. Sound like yours ta me.”

“They belong to il Tornja,” Adare said, voice tight. “And he is not my ally.”

“Ah…” Nira let the syllable hang in the light breeze. “It's like that, then.” She shook her head. “Civil war, girl. It's nothing ta fuck with.”

“I've got no choice,” Adare said, more heat than she intended in her voice. “The
kenarang
murdered my father.”