Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“If we had a bird,” Laith observed tartly, “you could just drop through the ’Kent-kissing roof.”

“We don’t have a bird,” Valyn replied.

“Getting into the camp itself shouldn’t be hard,” Talal said. “We’ve got the armor we stripped off that messenger.”

Valyn considered the idea for a moment. It was bold, but then, most good plans were bold. He had an Annurian horse, Annurian armor, Annurian accent. On the other hand, his burned-out eyes were immediately recognizable. There was no way to know how much communication had taken place between il Tornja and the Eyrie, no way to know what lies the kenarang had fed his sister, no way to know whether or not the guards around Adare’s tent even knew what he looked like. There were scores of questions and precious few answers.

“I could get past the other pickets easily enough,” Valyn said slowly. “It’s dark, and men at those posts are just normal legionaries.” He shook his head. “The Aedolians are the problem. If il Tornja is half the strategist everyone says, he’ll be guarding against us, which means the Aedolians will be guarding against us. They’ll know what I look like, which means they’ll know what you look like, too.”

“I’ll tell you,” Laith grumbled, “I’m getting pretty sick of the fucking Aedolian Guard. If they’re not off in the ’Shael-spawned mountains trying to murder the Emperor, they’re swarming all over the two people on this continent that we need to get close to.” He turned to glare at Valyn, as though the whole thing were his fault. “When do they go away? Or do they wipe your ass every time you take a shit?”

Valyn was about to snap out a sharp retort when he paused. “No,” he replied after a moment, raising the long lens to his eye once more, “they don’t.”

“Don’t go away?”

“Don’t wipe your ass. At least, they didn’t when I was a kid. Back in the Dawn Palace they would station themselves outside the privy chamber. They never came in.”

Talal pursed his lips. “I see where you’re headed with this, but we’re not in the Dawn Palace. Whatever latrine Adare uses will be ringed with Aedolians, same as her tent. You’ll have as much trouble getting into one as the other.”

“The difference is,” Valyn said, pointing to the soldiers below who had begun digging a hole a dozen paces from Adare’s tent, “that I’m not going to have to get inside. I’m going to start inside.”

* * *

By the time Valyn had threaded his way past the outer sentries, picketed his horse with the other animals, then talked his way through the inner guard, he was sweating, despite the cool night breeze. Fortunately, just about everyone in the camp looked half dead on their feet-they were resting now, but evidently il Tornja had been pushing them even harder than Valyn realized-and the guardsmen waved him through with little more than a glance at his Annurian armor and a few cursory questions. It seemed a crude sort of vigilance, but effective enough in its rough way. Even after being waved through, Valyn had to remind himself to walk slowly, to emulate the weary plodding of the other legionaries, to look at the muddied ground before him instead of glancing over his shoulder.

They’re exhausted, he reminded himself, and you’re just one more soldier among thousands. And it’s night .

He offered up a small prayer of thanks to Hull for the darkness. Though he could see quite clearly, the night hid his face and his eyes from the Annurians. Now that he was past the picket, no one was likely to challenge him unless he approached the Aedolians around Adare’s pavilion. By the time he reached her tent, he had grown almost accustomed to his near-invisibility, and paused for a moment outside the pools of light cast by the torches to size up her guard.

Had he been optimistic enough to hope that the Aedolians might slacken their vigilance while surrounded by more than twenty legions, he would have been disappointed. A pair of men in full plate flanked the doorway while eight more surrounded the tent, two at each corner, back to back, facing out into the night: a double diamond. The position was simple, but nearly impenetrable-double sight lines, redundant postings, physical contact between pairs.… There were ways to break it, and Valyn had studied them, but each required multiple attackers and ranged weapons. With his full Wing he could probably get inside, but the odds of emerging again were pretty long. And il Tornja’s pavilion was likely to be the same. The thought made his palms start sweating all over again, and with an effort he shoved it aside.

Do what you came to do, he reminded himself. The kenarang ’s time will come .

He stepped away from the torchlight and walked back into the chaos of the camp, stealing glances at the soldiers as he passed. He recognized insignia from the Thirty-third Legion, the Fourth, and the Twelfth, plus a few he couldn’t quite recall. The composition of a field army tended to be somewhat fluid. Legions rotated in and out, and the individual men comprising the Army of the North would vary considerably over the course of a decade or so.

He circled around Adare’s latrine to approach from the opposite direction. Standard legion procedure placed the long lines of latrines on the camp’s perimeter, but then, standard legion procedure didn’t account for a princess in the midst of so many military men. Adare’s presence had forced the camp commander to improvise on the established pattern, setting aside a small patch of earth for her personal use, surrounding it with a rough tent, and conscripting two weary soldiers from their normal duties to dig a deep hole for his sister’s safety and comfort.

It was the weariness of the men that Valyn was counting on as he approached.

“All right, assholes,” he said, stepping inside the canvas flap, “go eat your fucking chow.”

The nearest legionary, a young man with a wine-stain birthmark across half his face, looked up with a scowl.

“And just who in the fuck are you?”

Valyn snorted. “You need a formal introduction? If you want to keep digging, by all means.…” He gestured toward the hole, then turned toward the tent’s entrance.

“Hold up, friend,” called the other. He was older than the first, and leaned on his shovel. The meager lamplight flickered off his sunburned scalp. “What’ya want?”

Valyn turned back, raised an eyebrow. “What I want is a nice sweet girl to suck my cock as I fall into a deep sleep, but what I get is Captain Donavic, may Ananshael bugger him bloody, sending me over here to spell you two lucky horsefuckers.”

“Who’s Captain Donavic?” demanded the younger man.

“Who fucking cares, Hellem?” said the older, climbing out of the hole and scrubbing ineffectually at the dirt on his clothes with a weary hand. “This fella here’s good enough to offer to finish our work.…”

“Hardly our ’Kent-kissing work,” the younger soldier spat. “If the Sons of Fucking Flame are so excited about the new Emperor, why aren’t they digging her latrine?”

Valyn clamped down on his shock, even as the older man made a shhing motion with his hand.

“She’s not their Emperor, Hellem. She is the Emperor. One of the captains hears you talking like this, you’ll be lucky if you spend a week in the stocks.”

Hellem shook his head, but lowered his voice. “Ain’t right,” he spat. “I’d follow the kenarang straight up Ananshael’s arsehole, but this thing, the way he’s going along with her … It ain’t right.”

“I don’t recall them asking us,” the older soldier said. “We signed on to march and to fight, not to do the figuring about politics and palaces. I’ll tell you what we do: we obey. If the general says double-time, we kick it in the ass, and if he says dig a latrine, we dig a latrine.” He paused wearily, glancing up at Valyn. “Unless, of course, there’s someone else good enough to finish the job for us.”