Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

Kiel watched him, eyes blank as shells. Only when Kaden finally nodded did he continue.

“Tan’is resolved to destroy the rest of the new gods, to capture and kill them individually, or to strike directly at Ciena and Meshkent. He believed-not without warrant-that the elimination of those two would cripple the others, that the new gods were in some way dependent on or emergent from their parents.”

Kaden stared. “Was he right?”

“We don’t know,” Kiel replied evenly. “We began to lose the war then, and when it was clear that your kind would defeat us, those gods who had taken your side … departed. They slipped clear of their adopted flesh. Their influence remains, but they are gone.”

“Holy Hull,” Triste breathed quietly.

“Yes,” Kiel agreed. “Like Hull. The god himself remains remote, unmanifest, but we know his darkness.”

“I should have left you in the Dead Heart,” Kaden said finally, the words loose before he could call them back. “I should have left you to rot.”

“You would not have escaped without me,” Kiel replied. “Even if you had won free somehow, you are not prepared to face il Tornja. He will destroy you without my help. He may destroy you in spite of it.” He shook his head. “I was accounted a good mind among my people, but Tan’is was always the better strategist, the better tactician.”

Kaden stared. “You killed two of our gods, and now you’re talking about helping me?”

Kiel nodded. “As I said, my goals are not those of Tan’is. He seeks a return to the past. I am more interested in chronicling the present.”

The Csestriim fell silent. Kaden stared at him a moment, then turned to Triste. She met his eyes with her own wide, wild gaze, then shook her head helplessly.

“I don’t know, Kaden,” she said. “He helped us. He keeps helping us. He’s here, right?”

Kaden blew out a long, unsteady breath. “All right. If you want to help, help. What about Ran il Tornja? What is he doing?”

“As I told you before,” Kiel replied, “he has not abandoned his charge. The gods are gone, beyond his reach, but he seeks another way to destroy you. Has sought one for many thousands of years.”

“And the fact that he’s taking action now…” Kaden began, trailing off as the horror hit him.

Kiel nodded. “It is impossible to be certain of the movings of another mind, but it would seem that our lost general has finally found what he seeks.”

“No, no, no, you’re missin’ the point, ya ox’s ass,” Nira said, smacking her cane against her palm, causing her horse to start. “Ya don’t need ta sign the papers, and swear the oaths, and have yer tits anointed with the holy oils, and whatever all other little bits a’ theater yer family’s been parading around the last few hundred years. Ya just do it.”

Adare took a firm rein on her temper. She was exhausted. Exhausted from riding from dawn until well past dusk every day since Annur. Exhausted from trying to anticipate il Tornja’s next deception. Exhausted from second-guessing herself. Exhausted from wondering if she had overstepped in claiming the throne, a throne never intended for her, a throne for which she might be killed, or even worse, forced to kill good people, Annurian citizens who would rise up against her, refusing to accept a female Emperor. Exhausted from telling Fulton over and over to back off, to give her space to talk in private, to think. Exhausted from sitting appropriately upright in her saddle when she wanted to collapse over the cantle. Exhausted from the sickness that twisted in her gut every morning, a result, no doubt, of the miserable camp food. Exhausted from worrying about the scars laid into her skin, from trying to wring some sense from the events at the Everburning Well. And exhausted from Nira’s endless tirade of acerbic counsel, Nira, who, despite her advanced age, seemed the only person in the long muddy ranks with any energy left.

The road north had given Adare plenty of occasions to doubt whether elevating the old woman to Mizran Councillor had been the wisest decision. On the one hand, Nira had ruled an empire of her own for centuries, which gave her hundreds of years more experience ruling an empire than anyone else Adare knew. On the other, that empire had ended in a morass of war, grief, and ruin. So, maybe not such a good model after all.

It had been nine days since Annur, nine days of forced march through terrain that had shifted from open farmland, to low hills, to thick pine forests, dotted with bogs and streams. Without the imperial road-a mind-boggling feat of engineering comprised of stone bridges, wide flagstones, and ditches on either side to channel away the runoff-the army would have been helplessly mired days earlier, as soon as they entered the Thousand Lakes. As it was, the Sons could travel only so fast on a road built more for commerce than military transport. Adare found herself simultaneously exhausted by their pace and chafing at the lack of progress, worried about what might be transpiring ahead of her in the darkness of the primeval forest, and behind, in the capital she had so hastily abandoned. In fact, the farther she marched from Annur, the more she doubted her decision. Facing il Tornja and meeting the Urghul threat-if there even was an Urghul threat-had seemed crucial back in the capital, but what had she sacrificed in order to march north? What opportunities had she destroyed?

“If I’m going to sit the Unhewn Throne,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “there are forms to be observed, rituals. And I can’t observe them here, stuck in the middle of a ’Kent-kissing forest.”

Nira blew out her cheeks. “Sometimes, girl, I’d swear you were denser than my brick-headed brother.” She waved a hand at Oshi, who was staring at the palms of his hands as though they were intricate maps, oblivious to the movement of his horse beneath him. “You get a throne by taking it, not by asking for it.”

“I can’t just take it,” Adare protested. “Allegedly, I have il Tornja’s support, and that means I’ve got the army, too, but leaving aside the fact that the bastard murdered my father, that I intend to see him executed the moment we catch up with him, it is the historical precedent that makes a person Emperor.”

“A historical precedent,” Nira replied, “that is just going to bugger you right up your pretty puckered arse. Yer history is all about men, your ritual is about men . Unless you’re plannin’ to strap on a terra-cotta cock and go back to Annur thwackin’ people in the face with it-which I don’t recommend-ya need to tip the whole board full of history directly into the piss bucket and start over. You need people to see you, not the man you’re not.”

Adare shifted to try to relieve the chafing in her thighs, the ache in her lower back. “But the authenticity,” she said, “ comes from those rituals. It comes from history. Otherwise, what makes the Emperor the Emperor?”

Oshi turned, something about the question having snared his attention. “Ants,” he said, “have an empress.” He smiled broadly, encouragingly. “The little soldiers-they all serve her.”

“Unhelpful, you dolt,” Nira snapped. “Ants do what they do because it’s built into ’em. They can’t not follow the empress.” She turned back to Adare. “ People, though … people’ll follow anyone, anything. I wandered through a village once, a long while back, where the folk were led by a ’Kent-kissing tree; asked it questions, thought they heard answers in the creaking branches and the rustling leaves.”

“Annurians aren’t savages…” Adare began, but Nira cut her off with a hoot.